Since the end of the second world war, except during the early years of the cold war, civil defence has been regarded by successive governments as a Cinderella policy issue, perhaps more so since the Berlin wall came down. Emphatically, that must change, and it must change with dramatic speed and intensity and with resources to match.

Throughout the whole of the cold war, even when a nuclear threat hung over the people of this country, I do not recall a single senior politician or security person saying that they considered that an attack with mass fatalities was inevitable. It is a very different situation today. Last year, the Director of Europol said that it was no longer a question of whether there would be a terrorist attack in Europe but, simply, a question of when. In a recent interview on the BBC's "Breakfast with Frost" programme, Sir John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, was asked whether he thought that a terrorist attack on the UK was inevitable. He replied:

"I am afraid I think it probably is, but that doesn't mean we aren't doing all we can to prevent it."

In a meeting of the Liaison Committee on 21 January, the Prime Minister was asked by the right hon. Member for Swansea, East (Donald Anderson) whether he believed

"that an al-Qaeda attack on the United Kingdom is inevitable?"

The Prime Minister replied:

"I believe it is inevitable that they will try in some form or other."

In the immediate aftermath of the 11 September attack, the Prime Minister gave the starkest warning as to the forms that an al-Qaeda attack might take. He said in the House on 14 September 2001:

"We know that these groups are fanatics, capable of killing without discrimination. The limits on the numbers that they kill and their methods of killing are not governed by any sense of morality. The limits are only practical and technical. We know, that they would, if they could, go further and use chemical, biological, or even nuclear weapons of mass destruction."—[Official Report, 14 September 2001; Vol. 372, c. 606.]

I do not for a moment suggest that the Government have been inactive on civil defence, but I seriously question whether their priorities are right and whether they have acted with sufficient intensity. Undoubtedly, they have been preparing for the worst case, which is their responsibility. We read in the newspapers that body bags are being stockpiled.The Sunday Times of 17 November stated:

"Officials involved have revealed that planners are considering the extreme case of hundreds of thousands of deaths being caused by a biological attack involving plague or smallpox."

The same article reported the establishment of a United Kingdom mass fatalities working group and the creation of a strategic disaster mortuaries working group for London, with consideration being given to mobile and modular mortuaries and with the possibility of RAF Northolt being designated to provide, in the delicate phrase ofThe Sunday Times, an "overflow capacity".

I do not criticise the Government for preparing for mass deaths; that is their unmistakable responsibility and duty. However, I am interested to know what the Government are doing to engage in mass life-saving, if the worst should happen and, in particular, if there is a terrorist attack on the UK involving weapons of mass destruction. I spent four years at the Ministry of Defence and in my experience the military have a particularly accurate way of coining terms of remarkable brutality. I read in another press article that, as a result of their planning and the exercises carried out to prepare for a biological attack on the UK, the armed forces will divide the luckless civilians caught in the vicinity of an attack into three categories: walkers, floppers and goners. Little prospect of survival is held out for the floppers and goners.

I, like any number of Members of Parliament with constituencies in London or its vicinity, have countless thousands of constituents who travel into the city each day in the confident expectation that they will return safely at night to their families. I, for one, want to be satisfied—in detail and by the Government—that should my constituents should be so unfortunate as to find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time when the worst happens, they will not be consigned to the ranks of the floppers and goners and doomed to die.

There are four issues relating to life-saving that I want to raise with the Minister. First, there is the issue of resources and money. The most successful civil defence is a civil defence plan that never has to be employed for real, and that means prevention. Preventing terrorism is linked to a very simple, even primitive, equation: either we get the terrorists first, or they get us. From my time in Northern Ireland, I remember the resources that are required to put just one person under 24-hour, seven-day-a-week surveillance. How many suspects or potential suspects are there in the UK who may represent al-Qaeda secreted cells? Is it hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands? Are there perhaps over 100,000 people who need to be found and eliminated as potential suspects?

Yesterday in the House, we debated an Intelligence and Security Committee special report on Bali. I very much welcome the fact that the Committee produced the report in quick time. I hope that, right now, the Committee is examining other matters equally quickly and will also be making a special report to the House, as fast as possible, on whether the resources being made available to the intelligence services, the anti-terrorist branch and special branches up and down the country are adequate to the task of finding the terrorist cells that are undoubtedly still secreted in this country.

I have said in the House that, in dealing with terrorism, intelligence is the first, and probably the last, line of defence. In the judgment of those in a position to know, such as the Prime Minister and the head of the Metropolitan police, an attack on the United Kingdom is inevitable. That could result in loss of life far greater than that on 11 September, and I say to the Government that resources must be provided to the intelligence services, the police and the anti-terrorist branch to enable them to do the job that they have to do, while there is still time.

My second life-saving issue is the Government structure for effective counter-terrorism and civil defence. The Home Secretary is the Cabinet Minister in the lead, but does he have sufficient authority to deal with all the other Departments whose co-operation and involvement in civil defence is essential? Is he in a position to take an effective lead in, and charge of, the whole of civil defence planning, preparation and organisation in this country? I doubt it. At least six separate Departments and Cabinet Ministers are involved, including the Cabinet Office and the Prime Minister. It might be of passing interest to the Chamber to know that when this debate was announced, the first Government Department to get on to my office to ask what I was going to say was not the Home Office but the Cabinet Office. The Ministry of Defence and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office are involved, as is the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, which has responsibilities for the regions and local authorities. The Department of Health and the Department for Transport are involved, as are the devolved Administrations in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

I may be wrong, but it appears to me that the structure that we have leaves a great deal to be desired if we are to have truly effective and authoritative civil defence planning and organisation in this country. I am not necessarily advocating that we go down the same route as the United States and create a separate Government Department to deal with the issue, although I have been briefed in the United States on its new Department of Homeland Security and I believe that it will prove a very effective answer to that country's civil defence needs. I ask the Government, and the Prime Minister in particular, to consider one fundamental question. If the worst should happen and there were a terrorist attack on this country involving mass civilian casualties, would the civil defence governmental structure in place today continue unchanged? If the answer is emphatically no, and it would be changed radically, then I put it to the Government and the Prime Minister that that change should be made now, before that loss of life occurs.

My third life-saving issue is the need to ensure that emergency personnel are put in the very best position to provide their life-saving services if the worst should happen. I welcome the Home Secretary's announcement yesterday that there will be a major civil defence exercise on the ground in London. It is high time—18 months after 11 September. That exercise should surely have taken place already, and there should be such exercises in other cities and local authorities up and down the country.

I am aware from what I have read in the press that there have been many exercises in COBRA. I spent many happy hours in COBRA as Minister for the Armed Forces, and as the security Minister of State in Northern Ireland. I do not suggest that COBRA exercises are without value, but that value is limited. They are command and control and communications exercises. The only way to get real value is through undertaking exercises on the ground.

The basic principle of exercises is, and has always been, that the closer that one can approximate the exercise to reality, the greater the value of the exercise. In that case, as elsewhere, the United States is well ahead of us. A few months ago, in my hotel room in the United States, I turned on the television and saw a full-scale exercise taking place in the local county based on a simulated anthrax attack. It was played out on the ground, in the streets and throughout the county. At the end, the emergency chiefs were interviewed on television about the lessons learned. One wonders whether any such thing could happen on television in the UK. Mercifully, the United States is a more open society.

One lesson learned, for example, was that the anthrax antibiotic was available only in bulk and that vital lifesaving time would be lost in breaking it down into small amounts that could be quickly and easily made available to victims of the attack. I put it to the Minister that one learns such lessons only by means of exercises on the ground.

There is plenty of evidence for thinking that the level of exercises is seriously inadequate in the UK. Last November, the National Audit Office produced a report that examined the preparedness of health authorities. The report demonstrated that one third of health authorities had not tested their plans under the category:

"Testing of plans—chemical, biological and mass casualty incidents".

When it came to the testing of plans for radiological or nuclear incidents, four fifths of the health authorities had not tested their plans. Only last night, on the BBC television news, Professor Michael Clarke of King's college, London said that at the local health authority level the lack of preparedness was as shambolic as it was two years ago.

I hope that hon. Members will make inquiries in their constituencies about the exercises that have been carried out by emergency services and accident and emergency departments in their areas. They should make the results of their inquiries known to the Minister. There needs to be a dramatic improvement in the level of exercising and training of the emergency personnel on whom the lives of those who may be caught up in a terrorist attack will ultimately depend.

The final issue in my saving of life agenda is the adequacy of the medical treatment policy that the Government are adopting, with reference to an attack with weapons of mass destruction on the United Kingdom. I warmly welcome the decision of the Science and Technology Committee under the chairmanship of the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) to conduct an inquiry into the scientific response to the terrorist threat. As I have said personally to the hon. Gentleman, the inquiry being carried out by his Committee is the single most important Select Committee inquiry being carried out in this House, and I say that as a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee. I hope that that Committee will make all possible speed with its inquiry and will make the earliest possible report, or series of reports, to the House. I hope that it will cover in its report the medical and scientific response to nuclear and radiological attack, toxic chemical attack and biological attack.

The most urgent medical policy issue is protection of the public against a smallpox attack. It is of the utmost urgency for evident reasons. It is the area where there is the greatest potential to save life because a vaccine is available. In the United States recently, I received a confidential briefing on its worst-case scenario of a smallpox attack in the United States. The results were horrific. I am not able to disclose the details, but I shall refer to one assumption that is common and accepted medical knowledge. In the event of a smallpox attack, every person infected with smallpox is likely to infect a further 10. Smallpox will spread like wildfire, and, as we know, its consequences are normally fatal unless vaccination can be provided.

I, like other hon. Members, was interested to hear the person who was described as a senior Government adviser being interviewed on the "Today" programme yesterday. Sadly, owing to the culture of fear that seems to exist in the public sector, he had to remain anonymous because he expressed views that were critical of the Government's policy. He had grave doubts about the adequacy of the Government's policy for dealing with a smallpox attack; indeed, he said that the Departments involved were displaying a lethargic approach to this vital issue.

There is no doubt that the position that the British Government are taking is different from that of others. In the United States and in France, the Governments have already announced that they will procure sufficient smallpox vaccine to vaccinate the entire population. In the UK, the Government treat as confidential how much vaccine is being procured for reasons that I wholly fail to understand or conceive to be justified. The Government have indicated that the amount of vaccine being procured is less than one per head of population in the UK, which is an extraordinary decision given that in the event of a smallpox attack people are likely to disperse and carry the infection with them. They could disperse to any part of the United Kingdom, even to some of the remote islands in Scotland.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the culture of secrecy owes a lot to the cold war, and that the Government ought to grow up? As he rightly implied, the United States has a far more open approach to this kind of thing. Although it is important for security reasons to keep things under wraps when facing down an aggressor such as the Soviet Union, that does not apply, in particular in reference to our preparations for biological attack, to terrorist organisations.

I agree with my hon. Friend. I see no security reason why information should not be disclosed. It is information that the public, whose lives are at risk, are entitled to have.

The all-important computer programme—which is crucial for the emergency services—to simulate how smallpox would spread in the United States is available and up and running. The Government's anonymous senior adviser told us yesterday that that computer programme had still not been completed and was not available for exercises by the emergency planning authorities here.

Lastly—this is not inconsequential—the United States President has, rightly, gone public and said that he will have a smallpox vaccination. In this country, the Prime Minister considers the information about whether he will take that precaution to be highly classified, and No. 10 yesterday made the ludicrous suggestion that it is a personal matter for the Prime Minister. It is a matter of utmost public importance and interest to know whether the Prime Minister is taking all necessary steps to ensure his survival in the event of a smallpox attack. He should have a smallpox jab, but the Government are inhibited because they think that if people know that the Prime Minister has been vaccinated, millions of them will ask why they cannot also be vaccinated. That is a reasonable question for people to ask and the Government should answer it.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that after the MMR debacle, the Prime Minister might be forgiven for being queasy about getting involved with jabs?

I take my hon. Friend's point, but this is a different issue. The Prime Minister should ensure that he is able to survive a smallpox attack.

I hope that the Government are prepared to take on a public debate—I welcome the fact that it has started in the media —on what their policy should be on preventive smallpox vaccination.

On the "Today" programme yesterday two different views were expressed. Professor Alastair Geddes of the Public Health Laboratory said that the advantages of preventive smallpox vaccination of the civilian population outweighed the disadvantages. We also heard the reported views of the chief medical officer that such vaccination is unnecessary and that the Government's policy of waiting until a smallpox attack has happened and then following a programme of ring vaccination would suffice. I question that view. Ring vaccination is uncomfortably redolent of the foot and mouth fiasco and I hope that the Government are not assuming that British civilians caught up in a smallpox attack would conduct themselves in the same way as cattle and meekly stand around waiting to see whether they are culled by smallpox.

There is no doubt in my mind that if such an attack took place, people would do everything possible to break out of the cordons, whatever the so-called quarantine cordons that the Government intend to erect, surrounded by police and armed servicemen apparently equipped with baton rounds. There will be infected people among those who escape, and the infection will spread to all parts of the United Kingdom. Against that background, it is incumbent on the Government to consider very seriously the possibility of enabling the people of this country to have smallpox vaccinations on a voluntary basis.

On the question of the Prime Minister, but going beyond him as an individual, may I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to the Home Secretary's words in the House of Commons yesterday? He said:

"Given that politicians are not held in high esteem and trust is not readily given, politicians, including me, will not seek vaccination against smallpox unless the vaccine is made generally available to the population."—[Official Report, 3 March 2003; Vol. 400, c. 591.]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that although that might explain Government policy, it clearly implies that the vaccine is not to be made available to the population?

That was the policy view expressed on behalf of the Government by their chief medical officer on the "Today" programme yesterday. That policy should be subject to detailed scrutiny. I question it strongly, and I hope that it will be one of the issues immediately dealt with by the Science and Technology Committee, and the subject of a report to the House.

On all the evidence available, the UK civilian population is at more serious risk of large-scale fatalities than at any time since the end of the second world war, including the worst period of threat to this country from the IRA. Civil defence should be at the very top of the Government's agenda. It should be on the desk not only of the Home Secretary but of the Prime Minister, and it should be on his desk repeatedly. I fear, however, that civil defence in this country is still under-resourced, under-prepared and under-led. I urge the Government to ensure, with the utmost immediacy, that civil defence has the resources, the preparedness and the leadership required before for some—perhaps a horrendous number—it is simply too late.

I am surprised by the relatively poor attendance at this debate. I think that our constituents are most exercised by this issue, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir J. Stanley) on bringing it to the attention of the House.

The Library has put together an interesting collection of newspaper clippings which reflects the importance of the subject to the fourth estate and the people whom we represent. I shall touch on one or two important issues, and I draw the Chamber's attention to my entry in the Register of Members' Interests. I am a reservist and could therefore be involved in the contingencies that the Government may put in place to deal with a terrorist attack on this country.

When I was serving, I came across some interesting characters called emergency planning officers. They are usually middle-grade ex-servicemen, tasked by local authorities with drawing up plans for emergencies in their localities. It is probably true to say that at that time, they were grossly under-resourced and usually a bolt-on added extra—put away by local authorities in a side room until they came out for their yearly exercise, if that. I remember thinking that the sector needed to be developed and properly resourced. In my area, the south coast of England, they were perhaps better resourced than they otherwise would have been because of the close proximity of the military and the problems that could arise from a nuclear accident. I suspect that, across the country, those resources were even thinner than those that I experienced in the south of England.

In recent weeks, we have seen the Government give a little more attention to emergency planning, which I welcome. However, I am left wondering whether it is too little too late and whether we need a culture change, similar to the one that the Americans have had, to protect our civil population.

I was recently in correspondence with a hospital in the south of England, which wishes to remain anonymous, in which we discussed the preparations that it had made for the possibility of a terrorist attack. It is probably true to say that any preparations were centrally driven, and I shall be interested to hear the Minister's comments on what direction has been given to health authorities to protect their people and to assist the civil population for which trusts are responsible in the event of an attack.

From what I was told, it seems that provision is fairly inadequate and, in particular, the protective suits with which personnel in the casualty department have been provided are second rate and liable to fall apart with minimal usage. Inadequate thought has been given centrally to what NHS trusts may need in the event of an attack. I fully appreciate that the Minister is not directly responsible for that, and I shall go on to explain why we may need an overarching method of pulling together the various strands to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling referred. I would appreciate some comment from the Minister on the preparedness of the NHS to deal with the issues that we have been discussing.

A chemical attack on the population of this country would be tragically and devastatingly obvious. An attack with biological agents would not be so obvious because there is an incubation period and it would take considerable time for the ill effects to become apparent. There are ways of detecting agents before they become clinically apparent, so it would be interesting to hear from the Minister what preparation he has made for early warning of the presence in the atmosphere of novel biological agents.

We shall rely in general on a pick-up by general practitioners and epidemiologists, so the problem will be one for public health. It would be useful to know and to be assured that everything is being done to pick up cases early. If we could do that, it would, as the chief medical officer said, be possible to vaccinate exposed populations and provide prophylactic antibiotics, which would reduce the toll.

It would be wrong of me to pre-empt the forthcoming report from the Select Committee on Science and Technology on the scientific response to terrorism, but it is probably true that the creation of a department for homeland defence is one of the topics that will be discussed. The United States, in its inimitable fashion, has pre-empted us and created such a department. It clearly feels that the threat to its population justifies that. It will be interesting to hear whether we shall proceed down that route. The problem is multi-departmental, and I have every sympathy for the Minister having to come here to discuss the issue, when he is probably ill placed to speak on behalf of the multifarious Departments that touch on civil defence. There is a danger that Departments will pull in different directions without co-ordination, and in this situation, that is precisely what is not required.

We are told that our reserve forces have embarked on something called a civil contingencies reaction force that will augment civil powers in the event of an attack on this country by a terrorist organisation. We know little about that, so it would be useful if the Minister gave us a few words of wisdom on the subject. How will the force be constituted? What will be its size and its functions, and, crucially, what training will it receive? It would be useful to know, for example, whether it will take part in the exercise planned for London in a few days.

That exercise will be a worthwhile use of our reserve forces. We hear that members of the reserve forces are having difficulties with the concept of an attack on Iraq. Such an attack is not homeland defence, nor is it territorial in the usual sense of the word, and a homeland task would be more in tune with the usual tasks of the Territorial Army. It would be useful if the Minister explained the function that he anticipates for the civil contingencies reaction force. Will he reassure us that no one in the reserve forces will be asked to carry out tasks for which they are not adequately trained?

I thank the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Mailing (Sir J. Stanley) for introducing the debate, and speaking authoritatively and clearly on what he sees as the priorities.

I was reflecting on how much the issue had become the subject of public discussion in a way that we could not have anticipated two years ago. The right hon. Gentleman made that point very well. Five or 10 years ago, civil defence and emergency planning was seen mainly as a response to unusual meteorological events, such as floods, hurricanes and drought. The people involved in civil defence were regarded as minor players. They were regarded as Cinderellas, and not taken seriously. They were perceived as a dad's army adjunct that existed in shadowy form giving a few drugs to a few people that one did not need to know much about.

As the right hon. Gentleman rightly said, things have changed fundamentally. It is important that Parliament ensures that the country puts a structure in place as quickly as possible to respond to the sorts of attack that are possible today that were not possible 50 years ago.

This is the third recent debate on the subject of which I am aware. A debate on emergency planning was initiated in the House of Lords by my noble friend Lord Roper on 4 December. Lord Filkin provided a response on behalf of the Home Office. On 12 February, a debate was initiated in this House by my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), who had a particular interest and concern about transport security. That debate was answered by the Minister of State, Cabinet Office. During today's debate, a Home Office Minister is present. I am happy that he is here, but it reflects the fact that the Government are still undergoing a journey of development on accountability. Of course, the issue cuts across a range of departmental responsibilities. I accept that the Home Secretary has principal Government responsibility on the matter and the Government have made that clear, but there is still some uncertainty about who fits in where.

I do not want to repeat things said by the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Mailing; I want to add two or three matters of concern. I speak as a London Member of Parliament, and one in a team of people in my party who shadow the Home Office. I declare a third interest. My hat is in the ring for our party's selection for mayoral candidate. Later this week, I may have that additional responsibility. In that capacity, I will be ready and willing to participate in the debate about such issues.

Yesterday's written statement by the Home Secretary was welcome, but I was surprised that it was not an oral statement. The statement is significant, and because it was so important there were references to it, and the Home Secretary commented on it, in the debate about the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 (Continuance in force of sections 21 to 23) Order 2003, which is a linked but separate issue. There would have been considerable interest in an oral statement. I know that there will be other opportunities, but I ask the Minister of State to take back to the Home Secretary a request that such a statement be the basis of an early opportunity to question the Home Secretary and Ministers, and to have on the Government Front Bench other available Ministers as well.

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it was particularly regrettable that there was no oral statement, not merely in view of the importance of the issue and the large number of right hon. and hon. Members who might have wished to put questions to the Home Secretary on it, but as the business of the House finished early last night and there was, therefore, no shortage of time yesterday for an oral statement?

That is certainly true. As somebody who participated in the first of the debates, I reflected that it would have been sensible and logical to take the three issues together. We had the anti-terrorism renewal order debate and the debate on the Intelligence and Security Committee's report on the Bali bombings. The logic would have been to take this debate with those. I regret that that was not done. It means that we have not had an opportunity to probe important issues, some of which have been raised today.

In addition to the points made by the right hon. Gentleman, I want first to mention the question of resources. I have not done the arithmetic, but I am reliably informed by colleagues who have, including my hon. Friends the Members for Bath (Mr. Foster) and for Kingston and Surbiton (Mr. Davey), that local authorities' budgets for the coming year do not show an increase in real terms for civil defence and emergency planning. If that is the case, it is extraordinary, given the extra demand for those matters and interest in them and the extra expectations that will be placed on them. We must be clear, and the public must be clear, how much money in the national budget is allocated to those matters, how much is in the regional budgets—London is an obvious example, because the Greater London authority has responsibility for these matters, among others—and what the local budget is? Our constituents would be reassured to know that money was allocated for these matters and would be properly deployed and spent. There would not be any criticism if money were raised and spent on that area of public protection.

In that context, I ask the Minister formally to give me an answer today to the proposal that I put to the Minister of State in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister who has responsibility for London planning and chairs the Cabinet Sub-Committee. I asked whether, not just in London but throughout the country, people could receive with the mailing that is about to go through their letterboxes, containing their local government precept, charges and information, the maximum information about what they should do if there is an emergency and a civil response is needed.

On one key issue I reflect the point made by the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Mailing about the fact that ours is a secretive society compared with, say, the United States. The public are asked to go to all sorts of different places to find different pieces of information. The more central the location of the information and the more clearly the public can be pointed towards it, the better. To his credit, the Minister of State said that he would reflect on that idea, which he thought was a good one. I had the impression that public dissemination of that kind might be made through the letterboxes in the next few weeks.

I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman says, particularly about the simplicity of including that information in mailshots that are going out anyway. However, does he not agree that it is important to do a risk assessment first, particularly as people may be alarmed by the material? We should perhaps target the advice on conurbations, where the risk is larger, and spare people in parts of the country where the risk is low from receiving what might be quite disturbing information.

I understand that. It is a difficult judgment. I think that the best advice can be given by those elected to represent people in the local authorities and areas in question—the leaders of the local authorities and Members of Parliament. Different types of information may be given. I am not arguing that the only place where people can look for information is in a brown envelope that comes with their council tax bill, but that seems a way of giving them authoritative, up-to-date information. There are other ways, of course. The Government have made it clear that they expect the media to be the prime source of information, and that is understandable.

However, taking as an example the smallpox case, there still seems to be an expectation that GPs will inform themselves by going up the line to the local health authority, local trust or public health laboratory service, rather than that such information will come down the line to them in advance. It is confusing for people to have to go to various website addresses for information about health issues, protective clothing or the person to whom they should turn for instructions. Such information should be in one place, regardless of whether the police, health service or reserve forces are responsible.

A national police service, which is led by the special branch of the Metropolitan police, deals with such matters. The Minister has heard me say before that it would be reassuring, rather than the opposite, to the public to know that even though, technically, the Metropolitan police special branch is leading—I understand that the police are the lead authority among the emergency services—an umbrella of cover is provided nationally in order to achieve maximum integration and minimum waste and duplication of resources. It would be useful if the specialism of the police were seen as available throughout the country. The Minister might be kind enough to discuss the arrangement between the different forces and the Met, which has taken the lead.

My hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington asked about maximising the improvement of security at our ports and airports. The matter was discussed by Lord Carlile in his report. He pointed out that small airports and ports are much less well protected than the public would wish. It would be helpful if the Minister would tell us whether a response has been made to Lord Carlile's recommendations and whether there is a plan to recruit more people for the border force, thereby making controls at our major airports more effective. I have previously mentioned that desks are unstaffed other than at core hours, and that checks are not made, for example, on behalf of the Customs and Excise because no one is available.

It is still possible for a temporary member of staff who has not had proper security vetting to go air side, even at Heathrow. We must resolve that issue, because everyone who works in a vulnerable location—ports and airports must count as such, as well as places such as the London underground—should be subject to security vetting.

In an earlier debate, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Allan) discussed the need to ensure that our information systems had the capacity to deal with the demand that will be placed on them in the case of a terrorist threat. In old-style military attacks, one would seek to take over the airport, control tower and radio station. It is no secret that someone who wanted to disable society now would try to interfere with radio and computer communications. We all know what happens periodically with mobile phones and similar technologies. Can the Minister reassure the public that arrangements are in hand, if not yet in place, to ensure that such systems are better protected so that, if suddenly there is mass use, the systems will not go down just when everyone most needs to use them?

Lastly, I wish to pick up on the topical issue of vaccinations and link with it that of the provision of protective clothing. 1 do not pretend to be an expert and I understand the concerns, but it seems to me that there should be a policy of having enough vaccine for everybody. I am not advocating that we should vaccinate everybody now. I know that contingency planning has taken place and that supplies have been pushed out through the national health service. However, the public would be reassured if they knew two things: first, there is, or soon will be, vaccine available for everybody, should it be needed, and secondly, there is, or soon will be, protective clothing available. To pick up on a point made by the hon. Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison), perhaps such clothing should be available in conurbations first, rather than generally. Those things would mean that there would be personal protection in the event of a terrible chemical, biological or nuclear attack.

There is a huge set of issues. The debate is welcome, because it will take those issues further. The knowledge that there will be a civil contingencies and civil defence Bill in the summer, which was firmed up by the statement yesterday, is also welcome. I hope that, using that as a backdrop, there will be an opportunity in the near future for the Home Secretary to come to the House to answer questions; that there can be other, informal occasions when parliamentarians can have a discussion and be briefed, and, most important, that the public can have clear and simple routes of access to the maximum amount of information, as soon as possible.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Sir John Stanley) on securing the debate. He brought to his very considerable speech his immense experience and stature within the area of defence and security. He made some of the issues that beset us starkly real. He started by reminding us of the public statements made by the Prime Minister and others about the very real possibility of this country being subject to some form of terrorist attack. He did not say so, but the possibility of that happening is considerably higher than the possibility of the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) becoming Mayor of London.

My right hon. Friend also reminded us of the importance of ensuring that all local authorities and health authorities have sufficient resources to fulfil not only their obligations under the present legislation, but the greater responsibilities that they will have as a result of the Bill that we will have later in the year. I venture to suggest, bearing in mind the risks to which my right hon. Friend referred, that regardless of whether authorities have the responsibilities, the resources should be there already. That would enable authorities to take discretionary action, even if they are not obliged to so.

My hon. Friend the Member for Westbury (Dr. Murrison) spoke wisely on health issues. He referred to his sadness about the attendance, but, as the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey said, this is the second debate on the subject in a month. However, I share the view that more hon. Members should perhaps have taken an interest. It is interesting that in the three weeks since the previous debate a number of new issues have arisen, on which I want to touch.

As the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey pointed out, a different Minister is replying to today's debate. I am delighted about that, but it raises the issue of overall responsibility. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Mailing quite rightly and properly said that he was not sure that we needed a whole Department, akin to the Department of Homeland Security in the United States. However, I am concerned that we do not have a single Minister who is ultimately responsible for the issues. The Minister of State, Cabinet Office, who replied to the previous debate, rightly said:

"The Home Secretary has overall responsibility for the safety and security of the citizens of the United Kingdom. He is in charge of security and also supervises all current counter-terrorist and resilience work by Departments".—[Official Report, Westminster Hall, 12 February 2003; Vol. 399, c. 305WH.]

That is an important job, but the Home Secretary is also responsible for the asylum chaos, our passport system and our police and law enforcement mechanisms. The amount of time that he can devote to this important matter must be extremely limited, which is why we retain the view that a Cabinet Minister should be responsible only for considering and co-ordinating home and security.

Yesterday, the Minister appeared as the Minister for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear coordination, as he was described in a document published by the Home Secretary on civil contingency planning to deal with a terrorist attack. He said that he had been in the job since the turn of the year, which is fine. Having worked with him for around 18 months, I have huge respect for him and I am not criticising him, but it demonstrates yet again that another Minister with an important responsibility—

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that yesterday was not the first time that it was stated on the parliamentary record that I hold those responsibilities. I held them when, among other occasions, I gave evidence to the Select Committee on Defence last year. The hon. Gentleman and his right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin) may have overlooked that, but other parliamentarians may not have done.

That is interesting and I am happy to accept the Minister's word, but the statement yesterday was certainly the first time that a number of us had heard of that.

The issue concerns co-ordination and whether it is possible for a disparate group of Ministers, each with different responsibilities, to co-ordinate. At least two of us in the Room have been in the same sort of position as the Minister. He will say that there are committees to do that, but those of us who have sat on Cabinet Committees and Sub-Committees know that it is easy to convince oneself that one is doing a grand job when hindsight often shows that matters of urgency and priority are never top of the agenda.

I shall not repeat all the issues that the hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey reminded us about, but I hope that the Minister will address airport security in his reply.

Much of this morning's debate has concerned public information. My hon. Friend the Member for Westbury suggested that we should worry only about areas of dense population, which is a reasonable and valid proposition. My view is that the biggest cause of fear is lack of knowledge of the issues. We should be less patronising in the way in which we treat the public concerning threats and the actions that can be taken against those threats.

There has been much jocularity about the old "Protect and Survive" leaflet of the 1970s and 1980s, which, with hindsight, we might say was absurd, but at that time it provided an element of information to the public and we should not throw out the principle because, with hindsight 20 or 30 years later, we can rubbish that document. Perhaps nowhere is that more important than with vaccination, although that will arise in other matters that I want to raise.

As my right hon. Friend said during his opening speech, vaccination, particularly smallpox vaccination, is important. The statement published by the Home Secretary yesterday referred to the establishment of a United Kingdom reserve of a national stock of vaccines and antibiotics. Last night, the BBC news said that 20 million doses were available, but I am not aware of any public statement on that, so perhaps the Minister will confirm it. The Home Secretary said in the debate in the Chamber that Ministers will not seek vaccination against smallpox unless that is made generally available to the population. When he was then challenged at the Dispatch Box by my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), the Home Secretary said:

"I do not believe that there is a problem with people approaching their general practitioner for the smallpox vaccination."—[Official Report, 3 March 2003; Vol. 400, c. 596.]

Those two different statements, made by the Home Secretary in the space of a few minutes, are misleading and could give rise to considerable confusion. Of course, anyone is entitled to go and ask their GP for a vaccination, but whether the facilities are available for them to have it is another matter. I hope that the Minister can clarify that point. I argue strongly that anyone should be able to have a smallpox vaccination if they feel that that is necessary for their and their families' safety. We definitely do not want the sort of confusion that, I suggest, has now arisen.

My hon. Friend referred to the lack of public information leaflets put out by the Government to help people to deal with civil defence and emergency issues. Is he aware that the Australian Government have already put out an interesting and comprehensive leaflet entitled "Preparing for the Unexpected"? If the Australian Government have concluded that it is necessary to put out such information in their very large country, surely we should be doing likewise, with great speed, in this tightly packed country where the risk of mass fatalities is that much greater.

My right hon. Friend introduces the next page of my speech perfectly, and saves me from making some of my points.

I turn to the websites referred to by the Home Secretary in yesterday's published statement. He mentioned ukresilience.info and the forthcoming Home Office site on terrorism. I do not think that anyone would describe the UK resilience site, which I spent some time studying yesterday evening, as user-friendly. It is very much a technocrats' website and does not provide large quantities of helpful public information from UK sources. For example, I searched for the word "smallpox", which I should have thought was reasonable on such a site, and four items came up. Three were simply extracts from newspapers and the fourth was on the medical effects of smallpox. None gave information about the terrorist implications, or about measures that people can take to minimise their personal risk from smallpox.

Yesterday, the Home Secretary said in the House that he would not produce guidelines along the lines of the "Protect and Survive" leaflet, but that the Home Office was developing a terrorist website to provide information. If one goes into the UK resilience site, as my right hon. Friend has, one finds links. Like him, I found the link to the Australian Government document "Preparing for the Unexpected". With the slight proviso that that is designed for an entirely different type of country, it is an extremely helpful, clearly written, explanatory document. It is not written in technical language, nor is it scaremongering. It provides the general public with a straightforward series of fairly simple advice.

There is some confusion here. On the one hand, the Government have said that they will not publish a leaflet in the form that has been seen before, but on the other, their own websites provide access to other countries' similar leaflets, which are helpful, but not designed for British circumstances. That seems highly contradictory. It is also worth making the point that one can access similar sites in the United States, Canada, France and New Zealand, all of which are far more helpful than the UK site.

Nowhere is that point more starkly illustrated than in an article that appeared inThe Sunday Times. I am not a great one for quoting the press because we all know that accuracy cannot be vouched for, but that article raised particular issues so I shall end by quoting from it and challenging the Minister to say exactly what is going on. The article, which was published on 23 February, stated:

"HOUSEHOLDERS are to be given guidance on how to survive in the face of a catastrophic terrorist attack. The guidance, which Ministers intend to reach all 24m homes in Britain, will include a shopping list of items that should be bought before a possible biological, chemical or nuclear strike".

The Cabinet Office said:

"It is not clear yet how advice will be issued nationally. In the meantime, local authorities are entitled to adapt the Australian guidance."

It goes on to describe the Australian guidance entitled "Preparing for the Unexpected", to which we have referred.

There is confusion. Westminster Hall is, by convention, a less antagonistic Chamber than the House, but I want to draw to the Minister's attention the widespread confusion about what the Government are planning to do about informing the public. I say with sincerity that the public are entitled to have information similar to that being provided in other countries that face similar threats. It is patronising to suggest that the public will be panicked into an absurd reaction. That may be true of certain individuals, but that should not affect the wider issue. At the end of the day, the British people are a sober and realistic people who will take the information at face value, and they should be trusted.

I hope that the Minister will answer some of our questions—we have given him a lot of time so he has no excuse for not answering all of them. We should like him to answer those questions that his colleague did not answer at the end of the previous debate, and those that have arisen today. The debate has been useful and constructive, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend once more on securing it.

I start by congratulating the right hon. Member for Tonbridge and Mailing (Sir John Stanley) on securing this Adjournment debate. It has been a useful debate, and the right hon. Gentleman was able to bring to it his considerable experience, not only as a former Minister, but as a Minister who dealt with a relevant Department. I am grateful to him and to the other Members who spoke.

A wide range of issues has been raised. I shall attempt to deal with them as fully as I can, but in 17 minutes I may overlook some, in which case I shall endeavour to write to hon. Members and follow up issues outside this debate.

Civil defence is an important topic; the Government take it seriously and have recognised it. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made a written statement on civil contingency planning to address terrorist attack. The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes). among others, asked whether an oral statement would not have been better. I shall certainly draw his remarks to the attention of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. However, difficult judgments have to be made on a lot of issues. In the current climate, there tends to be the belief that there must be a reason for choosing the particular date on which an oral statement is given, and the event may be given a significance that is out of proportion to the event itself. The intention of the written statement was to update the House. I ask the Chamber to accept that it is difficult to judge whether an oral statement will be interpreted by some sections of the media as meaning that the Government know something. Those are the judgments that we are wrestling with all the time in trying to get our communications right.

I completely understand. As we now know that there will be legislation later in the parliamentary year, it might be helpful if there were a periodic opportunity to speak on the matter so that it would not look like a panic response. We could all prepare for that, and the public would expect it, as a matter of regular updating.

I note what the hon. Gentleman says, and I note that we are discussing the matter for the second time in three weeks. Perhaps we are getting used to the idea of such debates.

I shall deal first with the question of structures and accountability, and then go on to some of the more specific issues. It is worth mentioning that the Government moved to strengthen the arrangements for emergency planning and civil protection immediately after the 2001 general election before the events of 11 September. In August 2001, the Government published a comprehensive discussion document on the future of emergency planning arrangements. At that time we concluded that the Civil Defence Act 1948 no longer provided an adequate framework for modern emergency planning. Its provisions relate to the organisation and protection of the civil population at a local level in response to a hostile attack by a foreign power.

The immediate concern was that since the 1980s, emergency planning had effectively concerned itself with preparations for responding to a wide variety of peacetime hazards in accordance with the policy of integrated emergency management. Since the mid-1980s, assumptions about the nature of potential threats to this country have changed dramatically, and the attacks of 11 September 2001 certainly brought that home to us. Planning began before 11 September and we have sought a clear structure for civil contingency planning overall, as well as the specific responses that have to be made to the threat of terrorist attacks, including the possibility of CBRN attacks.

The Home Secretary has overall responsibility for the safety and security of the citizens of the UK. He is in charge of security with direct responsibility for the main elements of the work to counter the current threat from terrorism: the intelligence work of the security service, counter-terrorist policy and building resilience against the terrorist threat. He supervises all current counter-terrorist and resilience work by Departments in his capacity as a member of three relevant Cabinet Committees. One oversees the work to strengthen our defences against terrorism, the second works to build the UK's resilience and ability to manage the consequences of major emergencies and the third meets to oversee lead Department management of major emergencies once they have taken place.

I was appointed Minister for CBRN co-ordination, reporting to the Home Secretary, at the end of 2001. We are supported in this work by Sir David Omand, who was appointed the Government's security and intelligence co-ordinator and permanent secretary to the Cabinet Office last summer. That new post was created to enhance the capacity at the centre of government to co-ordinate security, intelligence and consequence management matters and to deal with risks and major emergencies, should they arise. He is supported, as is the Home Secretary, by the civil contingencies secretariat in the Cabinet Office.

In reply to the argument that one person should be in charge of the whole response, I would argue that it is essential that, in their usual work, the major Departments of State have ownership of, and responsibility for, those aspects of our response and resilience to terrorism that come under their responsibilities. It is tempting to feel that, for example, airport security should be taken away from the Department for Transport and given to someone else, but in practice it is essential that those who are responsible for our airlines, airports, railways and the underground actually build into their day-to-day responsibilities an understanding of what is needed in the running of those major services so that we can respond to emergencies. We expect them to be able to do so should there be, for example, as unfortunately there have been, major, catastrophic train crashes. We cannot separate events that might be the consequences of terrorist action from those that happen by simple accident or act of God.

We have sought to create a structure supported by a strong central secretariat, in which individual Departments and Ministers are fully aware of their responsibilities in the overall picture, but in which the Home Secretary and the senior ministerial committee that he chairs ensure that there is an overall strategy and that people are held to account for their contribution to it. That is the essence of the structure that we have evolved.

One sometimes has to anticipate debates of this kind, so, depending on the issue that is likely to be the subject of such debates, there is no contradiction in the fact that the Minister who appears may be different. If the debate were to concentrate on, say, airport security, a Minister with responsibility for transport might respond. If the debate were considering our general structure for contingency planning against a variety of civil and terrorist emergencies, the Minister of State, Cabinet Office might respond. In anticipation of the likely thrust of today's debate and given my responsibilities for CBRN, I am answering on behalf of the Government. It is an illustration of strength rather than weakness that a number of different Ministers can respond to hon. Members on this matter.

I want to make it absolutely clear to the Minister, and to put it on the record, that he is countering an argument that no one has put. No one—certainly not me or my party—is suggesting that all those responsibilities should be extracted from individual Departments. The point that I have made repeatedly is that co-ordination is such a major issue that it should be the responsibility of a single Minister.

Co-ordination lies within the responsibility of my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, supported in CBRN, the current issue of concern, by me. We are supported in that both by the specialist teams in the Home Office and, in terms of coordination across the Government, by the civil contingencies secretariat. However, I am glad that the hon. Gentleman accepts at least I think he does—that it is not as odd for different Ministers sometimes to answer different debates as he suggested earlier.

I had hoped to touch on developments that are taking place in those structures, and particularly to make two points. I shall do so only briefly now. First, we recognise that, to support activities locally, we need a strengthened regional tier for emergency planning and resilience building. The development of that is under way as we speak. Secondly, I confirm that we intend to publish the proposals for a civil contingencies Bill in the summer during this parliamentary Session, so that it can be subjected to further scrutiny. It is important to stress that the development of that Bill has not delayed essential work on emergency planning structures at local and regional level, but a new legal framework is necessary.

Resources were mentioned a couple of times. Last year there was a 30 per cent. increase in the dedicated central Government resource to emergency planning, a rather narrow and limited area. That is an increase that we wish to maintain. However, that £19 million represents only a small part of the resources devoted to emergency planning. Overall, the spending review of 2002 has resulted in additional spending on prevention, including a 6.4 per cent. increase in real terms on national security and intelligence agencies. We are expanding our investment in health, police and other major agencies. The statement issued by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary yesterday indicated some but not all of the areas of additional procurement of equipment and training carried out since 11 September.

For obvious reasons, the question of smallpox was raised a number of times during the debate. While we are always criticised for not giving information to the public, when we do give out information, no one reads it or acts as if we had made it available. It is worth stressing that we published our interim plan for smallpox in December 2002. It had input from the national health service, the Public Health Laboratory Service and other specialist agencies. We set out the three components in the Department of Health's preparation for a response to a possible smallpox emergency—improved vaccine stocks, a plan of action and a cohort of immunised staff who can deal safely with any potential smallpox cases. All those components are being developed as part of the Government's preparedness to respond to a deliberate release of a biological agent.

It is worth stressing that we are the only nation other than the United States and Canada to have published a smallpox plan. We are also, however, working with the European global health security action group on preparedness for smallpox and we hosted an international modelling workshop in November that examined the models underpinning the action group's planning requirements. It is always interesting and entertaining to listen to people on the "Today" programme who will not speak in their own voice and who say they are senior Government advisers. I stand to be corrected, but I am not aware of anybody who could be described as a senior Government adviser having made representations to Ministers that were reflected on "Today" yesterday morning. If I am wrong about that, I shall inform the hon. Gentleman and the House.

It is important to stress that the strategy of containment and ring vaccination first, which is at the heart of the Government's smallpox strategy, is consistent with World Health Organisation advice. If there were more time, I would read out some supporting quotes, but I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that the strategy has been drawn up in line with WHO advice.

Time is running out. Does the Minister really believe that, given the length of time that it will take to vaccinate people inside the ring and for the vaccine to be effective, ring vaccination is a medically viable answer to a significant smallpox attack on the United Kingdom?

When I and my right hon. and hon. Friends in the Department of Health are advised by the chief medical officer and the World Health Organisation that our approach is the correct one, unless we have detailed scientific knowledge ourselves, I would rather not second-guess that.

The hon. Member for South-East Cambridgeshire (Mr. Paice) raised some related questions. In the debate yesterday my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary mentioned the figure of 20 million full vaccine doses. We are not—this needs to be stressed and it is also on the chief medical officer's advice—encouraging mass vaccination. Of course people should go to general practitioners if they want advice, but because of the risks associated with the vaccine, which can produce a severe reaction in one in 600 people, the CMO is not advising a mass vaccination campaign, nor are we proposing to launch such a campaign. However, the overall strategy has been set out in the interim plan for smallpox, which has been published.

I have two minutes in which to try to respond to a number of other issues, which I shall struggle to do.

The hon. Member for Southwark, North and Bermondsey asked about the policing arrangements. Clearly the role played by the police in responding to an emergency situation through the gold, silver and bronze command is different from that of, say, the special branch or the specialist terrorism services led by the Metropolitan police, but the overarching body is a sub-committee of the Association of Chief Police Officers, which looks at all policing activities in relation to counter-terrorism.

I apologise to the hon. Gentleman for Westbury (Dr. Murrison), who raised some important points. Towards the end of the year the Territorial Army reserve forces should be in place and able to offer military assistance and civil power under the normal rule. I shall write to him about the other points that he raised.

I shall refer initially to some of the background to the Tony Martin case. As the Minister will be aware, it is a sad and tragic case. It is tragic that someone died in the break-in to Tony Martin's farmhouse, Bleak house. It is sad that a Norfolk farmer who is a man of honour, integrity and decency ended up going to prison, having had absolutely no previous convictions or examples of bad character in the past.

I want to consider the laws of burglary, in particular those governing self- defence. Before doing so, however, I want to refer to Tony Martin's application for parole. I note that the original Minister who was to deal with the matter cannot be here today because he is ill, but I am glad that the Minister for Policing, Crime Reduction and Community Safety can respond to the debate. I spoke to his office about an hour and a half ago and informed his staff of the broad outline of what I am about to say, so I hope that he has been briefed on that. I am grateful to him for stepping in at the last moment.

The Minister will be aware that Tony Martin was convicted originally of murdering Fred Barras and was sentenced to life imprisonment. However, the conviction for murder was quashed on appeal and a conviction for manslaughter was substituted. The sentence was commuted to five years in prison. The first available date for parole was about five weeks ago. Everyone was led to believe that Tony Martin would be given parole and that that would not be a problem. As we know, parole was refused. That was a staggering decision. Tony Martin will challenge the Parole Board's decision through to judicial review, so obviously the matter is sub judice.

Will the Minister comment on the award of parole? I am talking in general terms; I note that the Clerk is looking a little apprehensive. I will not say anything that is sub judice. It is most important for the Minister to consider the matter from a general perspective. The two key criteria that matter most are the behaviour of the prisoner and the likelihood of his reoffending. I have a meeting lined up with the chairman of the Norfolk probation service in about two weeks. It would seem from press reports—they have not been denied—that the probation officer in question took a subjective view. For example, he is quoted as saying that Tony Martin showed no remorse. He is also quoted as having said that Tony Martin lived in the 19th century and believed that an Englishman's home was his castle. There is nothing dramatic in that. As for remorse—there has been much discussion about that in the local media—surely that is a private matter. I should not have thought that it was for a probation officer to take a subjective view. It is up to him to be dispassionate and professional and to make a judgment on the facts.

I draw attention to the contrasting case of Brendan Fearon, which is in the public domain. He was one of the burglars who broke into Tony Martin's home. He had a string of convictions as long as my arm and was a serial offender. He was convicted of burglary and was sentenced to three years' imprisonment. After 18 months, he was granted parole. Many people took the view, and said, that it was wrong for him to be granted parole in such circumstances, because if anyone was likely to reoffend it would almost certainly be Brendan Fearon. A few weeks ago he did reoffend and he is now back in prison serving a sentence for supplying heroin, yet he is an example of a person whom the probation service said should be granted parole. It is staggering that Brendan Fearon was granted parole but my constituent, Tony Martin, was not.

Will the Minister examine the role of the Prison Service? It submits reports to the Home Secretary but it also puts together a package of papers for the Minister to examine.

Order. I am listening extremely carefully to the hon. Gentleman. The subject of the debate is the operation of the law relating to property and how the case of Mr. Tony Martin affects that. The hon. Gentleman seems to be talking about the case of Mr. Tony Martin rather than the law relating to property. I do not think that he has yet stepped out of order, but he is not strictly addressing the terms of the debate, as I understand it.

I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for that slight rap over the knuckles. I shall come on to the law relating to burglary in a moment, but I am sure that you will agree that if one is making a strong case for reforming that law and trying to put something in context, it is important to use individual cases because they bring home to people how deficient the law might be.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. As he knows, Mr. Martin's home community of Emneth is in my constituency although Mr. Martin is my hon. Friend's constituent. As hon. Members will know, my hon. Friend was sadly absent from the House between 1997 and 2001, which was when the incident occurred, and during that period I took on responsibility for Mr. Martin and his community.

One of the most distressing aspects of the whole affair is a general aspect that affects not only Emneth, judging from my postbag, and no doubt that of my hon. Friend, and that is the loss of people's confidence in the criminal justice system, especially in relation to the invasion of privacy by burglars. That is enormously important, and if the law regarding people's security and safety in their homes is brought into disrepute by what people felt four years ago to be unfair treatment of an individual, it is right for the law to be examined. That is the background of my hon. Friend's case.

That was rather a long, but very helpful, intervention. It certainly described the scope of the debate, as I understand it.

I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard) who summed up succinctly the feelings of many of our constituents. She was right to point out that Tony Martin, whose house is the last house in my constituency, is a constituent of North-West Norfolk, but the community of which he is part, Emneth, is in my right hon. Friend's constituency.

My right hon. Friend's point brings me neatly to the law of burglary. I shall address a point about the Parole Board in a moment, but you are right, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because we are nine minutes into the debate and it is time that we examined burglary and the law relating to it in more detail. I see that the Clerk is cheering up a bit, which is obviously good.

Rural police forces up and down the country are overstretched. Burglars know that because they are targeting, more and more, homes in the more rural and sparsely populated parts of my constituency and the constituencies of my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk and my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson).

People in rural areas feel particularly vulnerable, which is not helped by the recent confusing comments of Lord Chief Justice Woolf and the Lord Chancellor. They appear to be completely out of touch. Burglary is not a victimless crime. It often involves the threat or the fact of physical attack, and many of its victims are permanently traumatised. When Lord Chief Justice Woolf and the Lord Chancellor suggest that first-time burglars should not be given custodial sentences they send out quite the wrong signal.

People in rural areas feel especially vulnerable, and many of them think that they should be able to use reasonable force to protect themselves. However, recent cases have resulted in total confusion. The Tony Martin case is well documented and everyone knows the facts. He shot a burglar who broke into his house, was charged and convicted. Another man was recently convicted for repeatedly stabbing a burglar who had broken into the flat where he believed that his children were sleeping. However, when another householder stabbed to death one intruder and seriously wounded another, the Crown Prosecution Service found that the force used was reasonable and did not prosecute. Clearly the CPS cannot decide where the boundary between reasonable and unreasonable force lies and what the law is. How can it be right to prosecute people when the law is confused and contradictory?

If lawyers, safe in their offices, cannot work out what is right, how can a householder be expected to weigh up the pros and cons in the middle of a violent struggle in the dark? Is it reasonable to expect a householder, during a few fearful seconds at the top of the stairs, when he is being menaced and perhaps threatened with a broken bottle or a knife, to guess what the law would say when lawyers do not know?

I do not want new over-prescriptive laws, and I certainly do not want a firearms free-for-all. We do not want here the situation found in parts of the United States where if one so much as enters someone's garden one is likely to be shot at. In a case in Florida, a Japanese tourist knocked on someone's door and was shot through the letterbox. That is the gun culture gone mad and we do not want that. However, I think—the Minister might comment on this—that we need a much more sympathetic approach by the police and the CPS towards householders who defend themselves. All too often, those householders, who have perhaps had to react in a split second, are made to feel the No. I criminal. There should be a presumption in favour of their innocence, rather than the other way round, which appears to be the case at present.

I am not suggesting that the Government should immediately change the law, but we should have a report from the Law Commission, which should be tasked with examining whether we need a new law where the relevant test is not the reasonable man test but a new, subjective test of what the householder believes to be appropriate at the time. At the moment, under the reasonable man test, many months after an incident, the CPS and lawyers will be sitting in their comfy chairs deciding what the reasonable man would do in those circumstances. How can they put themselves into the shoes of the householder who had to take a decision in a split second? If we bring in a new, subjective test, that would allow for the fact that every case is different and every set of circumstances quite unique. Householders would not then be prosecuted unless they were launching what I would describe as revenge attacks on burglars. They would not be prosecuted for any action that they took in the heat of the circumstances, on the spur of the moment. They might be prosecuted if, for example, they apprehended the burglar, held them at bay, and then launched a revenge attack on them. That would obviously be very different.

I urge the Minister to consider my suggestion. I do not say that the law should be changed immediately, but there is a strong tide of opinion in Norfolk and in many other rural areas that the law is completely confused. The Government should accept that and try to do something about it. My suggestion that the Law Commission should examine the issue and produce a report makes the most sense.

I also want to make a point about burglars and other intruders who break into properties and end up getting injured or, in this case, shot. I strongly believe that those burglars—those criminals—who have often committed wicked crimes should not have any civil rights with regard to any incident that takes place in that property. There is a great deal of support in my constituency and that of my right hon. Friend for the suggestion that when burglars break into a property, and it is manifestly obvious to them that they are committing a crime, they should leave their civil rights outside that building or home. I am thinking especially of the case of Brendon Fearon who is trying to sue Tony Martin for, we are told, £150,000, on the basis that he suffered injury and other problems when he broke into Tony Martin's house.

It would make much more sense if a rule were introduced whereby all civil rights are extinguished the moment that a crime is committed. It offends many people when it becomes apparent that burglars and other criminals can profit from a crime. The Minister must respond to the tide of public opinion and revulsion at some of the incidents that have taken place throughout the country. The Government must focus on these two points. I do not advocate American-style laws under which people can shoot whom they want. However, it is high time that householders know exactly where they stand. The Government must seize my point about people who commit crimes being able to profit from them.

The Parole Board apparently ignored its own guidelines when it made its decision in the Tony Martin case. Those guidelines demand that it considers any psychiatric reports in any review. I understand that it did not study the report by forensic psychiatrist Dr Philip Joseph, who made it clear that he had examined Tony Martin and concluded that he was not prone to losing his self-control and was no more volatile than the average person. He recommended that Tony Martin should receive parole, but it appears that that crucial psychiatrist's report was not included in the key papers that the Prison Service presented to the Parole Board. The Minister must consider that.

I am unclear whether the Parole Board is an independent body over which Ministers have no control. Will the Minister say whether that is the case, and will he examine any possible discrepancies in the Parole Board's decision-making process? Will he ask questions and discover why a key report was not presented? Will he ask the Prison Service for an explanation, and will he speak to the relevant prison governor? Will the Minister obtain a copy of the probation officer's report? If I write to him and ask for a copy of the probation officer's report that went to the Parole Board, will he supply it? Could I write to the chairman of the Norfolk probation service and ask for a copy, or will those reports always be confidential? In a case where there has been substantial publicity about what was in that probation officer's report—information that has not been denied—would it make sense for such a report to be published? Will the Minister explain to the House what he can and cannot do in such a case?

I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for giving me that leeway. I hope that the Minister will be able to answer my questions on the way that Tony Martin's application for parole was handled. Would he also consider setting up a Law Commission inquiry into how the burglary law works and what householders can and cannot do? If he could do that, many of us would be extremely grateful.

I congratulate the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham)) on securing the debate. As he appreciates, I have stepped in at the last moment to respond to it and I hope to address several of the issues that he raised. He introduced the debate in a measured way. I am sure that he would join me in regretting the fact that some of the coverage of the case has focused on individual people with some role in the decision-making process, drawing attention to where they live and their identity in a way that is not fair to people working in the service of the public.

With regard to the Parole Board's decision, we cannot comment on the circumstances of a particular case. I shall, however, set out the process for considering whether a prisoner serving a sentence of four years and over should be granted early release on parole licence. It is important to say that that is the approach that we expect the Parole Board, as an independent body, to follow.

Prisoners serving a sentence of four years or more are entitled to be considered for early release on parole at the halfway point of their sentence. It is for the Parole Board to determine whether to award early release on parole. When considering whether or not to release, the board is obliged to take into account the directions set down by the Secretary of State, pursuant to Section 32(6) of the Criminal Justice Act 1991.

Those directions clearly state that the Parole Board shall consider primarily the risk to the public of a further offence being committed at a time when the prisoner would otherwise be in prison and whether any such risk is acceptable. This risk is then balanced against the benefit, both to the public and to the offender, of early release back into the community under a degree of supervision. However, I must stress that when carrying out that balancing exercise, the board's overriding concern must be the protection of the public. That is all the more so when the offender concerned has committed either a violent or sexual offence.

The Parole Board will also want to satisfy itself that the prisoner concerned is likely to comply with the conditions of their licence. It will want to be satisfied that there is a sound release plan, which will assist the offender's rehabilitation and which has adequate safeguards that will enable the probation service safely to manage risk while the prisoner is in the community. In short, a significant part of the consideration that the Parole Board is required to undertake when considering an application for release on parole focuses on the risk to the public of further offending during the parole period. In general, if someone presented no risk of reoffending, it would follow that the Parole Board would be bound to recommend that person's release.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the availability of reports to the Parole Board. I shall look into that matter and write to him about it. From the briefing that I have, I have no reason to believe that all available reports and material were not considered by the Parole Board. The current position is that Mr. Martin will be released automatically at the two-thirds point of his sentence, and supervised on licence until the three-quarter point.

On the question of the law on self-defence, it is well-established in law—I am not talking about an individual case—that a person may use "reasonable force" in self-defence or in the defence of his or her family or property. The key elements of what amounts to reasonable force in self-defence may be summarised as necessity and proportionality. The force that it is reasonable to use in any given situation will depend on the nature of the threat that a person is facing—for example, the level of force that he can use to defend his life is greater than that to defend his property.

What constitutes reasonable force will depend upon the circumstances of each case and is a matter solely for the courts to decide. That does not mean that if a person inflicts injury on a criminal in the course of defending himself or his property he will necessarily face criminal charges. However, if a complaint is made that excessive force has been used, the police are duty bound to investigate. If charges are brought, the court takes account of what was reasonable in the circumstances for someone in the defendant's shoes. For example, some allowances are made for panic in the heat of the moment or the fact that the defendant is small and frail and the criminal is large and threatening.

Some sort of codification of what level of force is permissible is likely to be of only academic interest to people who suddenly find themselves under attack. Such a code is not likely to be the sort of thing one carries round in one's mind in case it is needed. I am not sure whether it would help to resolve the situation. When a case is brought to court, it is best left to the jury to decide, in the light of the circumstances, whether the action taken in self-defence was necessary and proportionate. The law allows a jury to take into account the fact that people defending themselves may not be able to judge to a nicety what level of force to use. Generally, juries are able to come to sensible conclusions that are on the side of the law-abiding public and the victim.

Although it is quite reasonable to ask for a proper approach by the police and the prosecuting authorities, many of the judgments in cases that are brought to court must be put in the hands of juries, which must play the role that they have traditionally played. We need to keep a careful balance between upholding an individual's right to self-defence and maintaining the general rule that people should not take the law into their own hands. It follows that changes to the existing law should not be made on the hoof as a response to a particular case. At this stage, we are not convinced that a change to the law on self-defence is required.

I congratulate the Minister on his grasp of the matter. When a case has the kind of reception that this case had, it brings the law and people's respect for it into some doubt. The reaction to a case is something that Ministers should take into account when they are reviewing possible changes in the law.

Both the points that the right hon. Lady makes are correct. High-profile cases raise public concerns about the way in which the system operates and Ministers are duty bound to reflect on the issues that are raised, but they are also duty bound not to commit themselves to rewriting an entire piece of legislation on the back of an individual case, if, on reflection, the principles seem to be sound.

This is not in the same category, but it relates to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) and my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Norfolk (Mrs. Shephard). The impression among the public is that the balance has shifted towards the criminal, rather than the victim. I was told recently by the head of the Norfolk Archaeological Trust that a person had broken into an archaeological site, climbed over a fence, fallen into a ditch and injured themselves and was now seeking legal advice about suing the trust because it had not put up a notice saying that there was a ditch. We can smile about that kind of thing, but it contributes to many people's perception of the balance. I know that the Minister cannot necessarily take the place of a judge, but he must have a view on the matter.

There is a slight difference between the issue of the law on the reasonable use of self-defence, which has been in place for some time, and the interpretation of the Occupiers' Liability Act 1984, which involves considering what was in the mind of the Government who introduced it. I suspect that the 1984 Act was much more to do with children going into their neighbour's garden to retrieve a ball and falling into a dangerous pond, than it was to do with climbing over fences belonging to the Norfolk Archaeological Trust.

I can add little further today, other than to say that there was an interesting exchange—not in the House, but on "Any Questions" last Friday night—between my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and the right hon. Member for West Dorset (Mr. Letwin), which appeared to point to a consensus that some revision of the 1984 Act might be in order. I understand that that was due to be discussed in the Committee that is considering the Criminal Justice Bill this morning. I cannot commit the Government on this matter, but there does seem to be something in the ether surrounding the issue, so perhaps we should watch this space.

Just over a year ago, I was able to initiate a similar debate on European Union enlargement in Westminster Hall. A year later, it is remarkable how much things have changed. Most important is the fact that we had the Copenhagen summit last December. The summit was historic in many ways, not least because it was agreed at the summit that 10 applicant countries should be able to join the European Union in 2004. Those countries—as all hon. Members know—are the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Malta and Cyprus. The summit also agreed that Romania and Bulgaria should be able to join the EU in 2007; and, significantly, the European hand of friendship was extended to Turkey's possible future membership.

It is amazing how much things have changed in so many of the countries involved in the enlargement process, not only in the past 12 months but in the past decade. If we pause for thought, we will remember that 10 years ago six of those 10 countries did not exist as nation states. Now, they are in the process of transforming their societies and economies, developing new political structures and once again engaging with the international community. The progress in all those states is epitomised by the example of Poland.

In 1989, the situation in Poland was dire in the extreme. Inflation was 600 per cent., consumer goods were virtually non-existent, travel was almost unheard of and the private sector was minuscule. Today, twice as many Poles go to university than went in 1989. Poles travel extensively and, although unemployment is still unacceptably high, 3 million businesses now create new jobs for Polish people every day, and inflation is only 1 per cent. There is an optimism and upbeat character throughout the country that shows how far it has progressed and is likely to progress in future.

The enlargement process is not over simply because we had a successful summit in December. Copenhagen was only the end of the beginning. Referendums have yet to be held in all the accession countries—the first will be in Malta on 8 March and the last in Latvia on 20 September. Those referendums are critical, and the debate in those countries will be intense.

We should also remember that the process of change must continue in the countries of central Europe. Political democracy must be strengthened and reinforced, market economies must progress and administrative capacity must be developed. For example, when the states receive structural funds from the EU, they will have to ensure that those funds are spent in the best possible way and that programmes have been introduced to maximise their value. That task should not be underestimated.

One issue relating to the accession treaty is still outstanding—it must be ratified by the European Parliament and by each of the current member states of the EU. In that respect, I must express my grave concern about the recent comments of President Chirac. He said that the many countries of central Europe that support the position of the United States on Iraq are childish, badly brought up and irresponsible. Such comments are totally unacceptable and absolutely outrageous. France, like every other member state, must ratify the treaty, and it may decide to hold a referendum. To issue veiled threats against the applicant states—the accession countries—is the worst possible way for France to develop a relationship with them. I believe that President Chirac's comments will prove to be counter-productive.

Cyprus was debated at length at Copenhagen. There is no doubt that the Greek-speaking southern part of Cyprus will join the European Union, but I am sure that we all want the whole island to join. I was very pleased to learn in the past few days that a third revised version of the plan for unification is under consideration. Extra time has been given to President Papadopoulos, who is the new President of Cyprus. It is said that he is more opposed to unification of the island than his predecessor, but I did not find that to be the case in my discussions with him when the European Scrutiny Committee was in Cyprus. He might surprise many people by being more in favour of unity than they think.

The new deadline for reaching agreement is 10 March, and a draft agreement is to be put to a referendum on 30 March. I hope that the process will be successful. If it is, we must pay tribute to the British involvement in it, not least that of Sir David Hannay, who has done an excellent job in ensuring that progress has taken place.

It was also agreed at Copenhagen that Romania and Bulgaria should not be forgotten, and 2007 was mentioned as the date for their accession, but I question whether those two countries should automatically be linked together, as the two are very different, as is their progress towards EU membership. For example, as of December, Bulgaria had closed in negotiations 23 of the 30 chapters, but Romania had closed only 13 of 30.

Recently, Commissioner Verheugen was in Romania. He made it absolutely clear that a lot of work had to be done, and done speedily, in that country. He was very blunt, as he often is, in saying that corruption had to be tackled and genuine attempts had to be made to create an independent judiciary. However, there is much work to be done in Bulgaria, too. I was in Bulgaria just a couple of weeks ago, and I heard from business people as well as politicians that there was still a great deal of corruption in the police force and that the judiciary was anything but impartial and independent.

Croatia has recently submitted an application to the EU—there is a debate to be had on that—and I understand that Macedonia has just submitted one as well. Personally, I feel that it would be helpful if the Government of Croatia were more co-operative in relation to the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. That would certainly enhance the country's application. I would be interested to know the Minister's position on the enlargement process as far as those countries and other Balkan states are concerned.

Finally, I shall refer to Turkey—I say "finally", but although I refer to it last, it is by no means least. An agreement at Copenhagen was of tremendous importance to Turkey. For the first time in some 40 years of sometimes heated debate, the European Council proposed a potential start date for accession talks in December 2004. That is of enormous significance, but there is a debate about Turkey's membership in principle and whether it should ever be admitted to the European Union.

Turkey is a Muslim country of 70 million people. It is situated predominantly in Asia Minor but it is also in NATO. Some people have said that Turkey should not be admitted to the European Union, most notably Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, although he accepts that progress has been made and that progress is planned for the future. His argument comes down to the fact that, in his view, Turkey is not a European country.

I fundamentally disagree with that point of view. For me Europe is an idea. It is about values, not about dotted lines on maps, religious beliefs, tribal loyalties or ethnic pedigrees. Countries that sign up to core values such as democracy and freedom of speech and of association should be eligible to join the EU whether their populations are Slays or Muslims. That to me is irrelevant.

Obviously, the laws of economics mean that no economic association, whether the EU or any other body, can keep on growing without limits, but that limit has not been reached in respect of Turkey. Since 1999, Turkey has responded positively to the challenges that face it. Its Parliament has passed measures to abolish the death penalty. Turkey has extended key rights to the Kurdish people and it has begun to reform its judiciary. Importantly, we have recently seen the election of a new democratic Government who have Islamic beliefs firmly rooted in the Islamic community, but who are also committed to progressive socio-economic reforms.

That is not to say that not much more needs to be done in Turkey—a heck of a lot more needs to be done. The Turkish economy still needs to be liberalised. Dissidents, ethnic minorities and ordinary prisoners need to be treated far better than they are at present. There needs to be genuine freedom of worship and far more rights should be accorded to the Kurdish people. Above all else, let us not forget that the military must have far less influence than it currently exercises in the Turkish state, albeit behind the scenes.

None the less, I stress my belief that things are changing significantly. By giving Turkey a provisional start date for negotiations, the Copenhagen summit has given us an historic chance to bring together two traditions and two civilisations. We should welcome that fact and understand its true implications.

The case for EU enlargement rests on two basic facts. The first is that the best interests of the United Kingdom and the European Union as a whole are served well by the process of enlargement. Let us not forget that some 14,000 British firms currently trade with the countries of central and eastern Europe, and their number is increasing all the time. Let us not forget that accession is relatively more important to countries such as Germany, which are much closer to the accession states.

However, let us not minimise the advantages of joining the European Union to those countries that we hope will enter in 2004 and beyond. For them, Europe offers hope, freedom and a chance of real prosperity. It offers them hope because the European Union with its liberal democracies is something to which they aspired for many years during the dark days of the communists. It offers them a real chance of developing a market economy in a socially responsible way. The European Union, alongside NATO, reinforces their prospects of genuine peace and stability well into the future. That is why enlargement is a win-win process that offers benefits to everyone. I hope that the House will achieve real consensus on the importance of enlargement and that there will be cross-party support for the treaty of accession when it comes before Parliament.

My final point is this: it is all very well politicians and Governments talking about the importance of enlargement—the case for it is overwhelming—but the important challenge is to convince the people of Europe that enlargement is critical. The other day, I was reading an article inE!Sharp magazine dated October 2002. It gave a comprehensive analysis of various European barometer polls. It stated the following chilling words:

"Not only do the vast majority of EU citizens have no idea which countries are candidates to join the Union, but many of them do not even want to know".

All of us in the House and beyond who believe in Europe and the values of the European Union and see enlargement as intrinsically worth while have a moral responsibility to take the message out beyond the House and to convince people of the worth of the European enlargement project. I hope that in some small way, at least, this debate will reinforce our determination to make enlargement work. It gives a chance to demonstrate that we must take all the people with us in this great project.

I am delighted to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David) and congratulate him on obtaining this debate. He says that it has become an annual feature of the House of Commons and I look forward to his applying for a debate next year, when we shall be only a couple of months from the completed enlargement process.

There will be no dissent in the Chamber this afternoon. All hon. Members, on both sides of the House, support enlargement for the reasons made clear by my hon. Friend. There was a time when the Opposition were against enlargement—they wanted a referendum on the Nice treaty and to block the enlargement process.

I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has adverted immediately from his statement that we are all in favour of enlargement to the idea that the Conservatives were against it. We have never been against it, but we believed that the way in which Nice was handled ultimately had precious little to do with enlargement. However, Nice has happened, and we want to get on with things as they are.

I am delighted by the Conservatives' retrospective change of policy that has been announced in this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly can take comfort from that. I am glad that we all now speak with one voice.

It is right that Britain should take pride in its role in the process, particularly because the speeches and initiatives of our Prime Minister during the past few years gave the enlargement process in Europe impetus and enthusiasm. My hon. Friend the Minister for Europe should be congratulated. From the moment that he became the Minister for Europe, he made it a feature to visit as many applicant countries as possible to keep those positive links going. He came here today from chairing a major Foreign Office seminar on enlargement.

That is why Britain has a right to be proud of what we have achieved in the enlargement process, and it is why, when we talk about creating a new Europe, we do not mean dividing up the countries between the so-called old Europe and the so-called new Europe. A new Europe will be created when the enlargement process is completed. That new Europe will consist of a group of countries that are determined to achieve the reunification of Europe and to create the largest single market anywhere in the world, covering 500 million people and bringing peace and prosperity to the continent. That process has taken place only because of the enormous amount of work done by so many.

I pay tribute to Gunter Verheugen, the Commissioner on enlargement, who I know has worked extremely hard. It is not easy to go through the acquis communautaire, but we should commend the speed with which the countries and their chief negotiators have tackled the subject. I am glad that only two of the original applicants are not joining in the first wave. I know that there was discussion about how big the wave should be, but the European Council was right to decide that as many countries as possible should join.

I will raise only three or four points in the short time available, because I know that a number of my colleagues want to take part in the debate. I see at least two former members of the European Parliament to whom Westminster has granted asylum. I know that they will want to speak, so I shall be brief.

First, I wish to flag up the issue of reform. Of course we welcome the new countries that are joining the European Union, but it is essential that the reform process that the Prime Minister and Chancellor Schroder began with their now famous letter of 25 February 2002 be completed. Once all the new countries are in Europe, unless the way in which the European Council operates is fundamentally reformed, there will be gridlock—the decision-making process will come to a halt. One of the practical suggestions in the practical letter sent by the two leaders to the Prime Minister of Spain was that, for example, the round-table discussions that take place when each country sets out its stated position, and the entire day is taken up in deliberations, must end.

We must ensure that the paperwork does not bury the bright officials from the United Kingdom who speak on our behalf and on behalf of other countries, but is put to one side, so that we can get on with making practical decisions. Therefore, we must look at the reform agenda for the way in which the European Council operates. I should be interested to hear from the Minister how many of the points in the letter of 25 February 2002 can be ticked off. I know that he is as keen as all Members of Parliament to make sure that the reform process is continued.

My second point is that, once the enlargement process is completed, we must not stop doing the good things that we are doing. Let the Minister continue his bilateral visits, and let there be more visits between parliamentarians at Westminster and those in the new European Union countries. The taxpayer pays for us to make three visits to European Union institutions, and that has recently been expanded to include the enlargement countries. Every Member of Parliament should decide to visit one of the member-designate countries to build up the relationship so solidly built at ministerial level by the Minister for Europe, the Foreign Secretary and others.

We must also enhance business opportunities in the eastern European member-designate countries. We have a lot of companies out there. Let it not be only Tesco that has a supermarket in downtown Bratislava. Let us make sure that other British companies go to those countries and, by investing in them, contribute to the development of their economies.

My third point relates to the euro. A number of EU enlargement countries will watch with interest to see what happens by June. Some of those countries might be in a position to join the euro before us. While I do not wish to turn this into a debate on the euro, I hope that the Minister will try to persuade the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister to release a timetable so that new members-designate will have an understanding of what we intend to do once the assessments are completed by 7 June. If we are not going to have a referendum, we should know about that, and we should know if we are to have one. I am sure that Warsaw, Riga, Bratislava and Prague are all watching with interest to see what we do. It would be tragic if we were to join the euro after all those countries had joined.

My fourth point relates to a practical move that we could support in order to show that the members-designate are really part of the EU. I propose that we should support the moving of an EU institution or agency headquarters to one of the member-designate states after 1 May. I do not mind which it is, as long as one is moved. I am not suggesting that the European Parliament should move, but something should. We should show practical support for the new member-designate countries to ensure that they feel that they are part of Europe.

After I May, the centre of Europe will not be Brussels. It will probably be Prague, although I will not get out my measuring tape to find out how big the countries are. Perhaps the Minister and the bright young things from the Europe team will tell me if I am wrong. The fact is that the centre of Europe will shift, and if we accept the cogent arguments on Turkey advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly, it will move even further away from Brussels. It is important that we consider my proposal, because through it we would be able to demonstrate our support.

My hon. Friend ended with Turkey and I, too, shall end with a brief note on that country. It is right that we continue to give Turkey hope, but we should not raise its expectations to such an extent that we cannot deliver on the promises that we make to it. To be frank, it is not for George Bush to champion Turkey's membership of the EU; it is a matter for our country—we have done it in the past and for other EU countries. We must step up our bilateral links with Turkey to ensure that when we talk genuinely about getting it into the EU, along with Romania and Bulgaria, we can back that up with examples of work that we have done.

The debate is important. I hope that it will become an annual debate. That will provide us with an opportunity next year to be on the doorstep of history preparing for that huge enlargement that will transform Europe for ever.

The Copenhagen summit was an historic achievement. Apart from allowing the accession of 10 applicant states into the EU, it put forward an excellent financial package for those countries. Some £25 billion will be given over the period 2004 to 2006 but, while that will help those applicant countries, that sum is only 0.1 per cent. of Europe's GDP. As my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David) said earlier, more than a decade ago six of the 10 applicant states did not exist. Since breaking away from communist rule, those countries have integrated themselves into world and European markets, something that many of us could not have imagined 15 years ago when they were still part of the Soviet empire.

The previous century witnessed wars across Europe; not only the two world wars, but 50 years of cold war and conflict over Cyprus. It seems that the prospect of Cyprus entering the European Union has united the country; it is a fantastic opportunity. If we can secure agreement on the Kofi Annan plan before the accession takes place, a united Cyprus will exist within the EU and the path will be clearer for Turkey to join later.

For European countries, the first 50 years of the last century were about survival. Governments had to deal with unemployment, ill health, poor housing and insecurity. The second 50 years, for western Europe at least, were about consumerism, from the sale of music records in the 1950s to the CDs and computers that we enjoy today.

For about 40 of those years, applicant countries experienced direct communist rule from Moscow. The changes in those countries over the past 10 to 15 years have been amazing. NATO will guarantee those countries security and peace for the foreseeable future and the European Union will provide them with economic prosperity and security. Relationships with neighbouring countries that were hostile in the past should now be secure.

Membership of the European Union will bring many advantages. As my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly said, we are now in a win-win position. The GDP of new members will increase by approximately 19 per cent. in the medium term. As I said earlier, six of the member states did not even exist in the past and none of the countries sharing a border with communist Poland now exists in the same form. The change has been entirely peaceful with no borders affected and no populations expelled in the process.

In the past year, the European Union spent?40 million helping Slovenia to prepare for membership, and?440 million on reconstructing Kosovo. Those figures cannot begin to convey the tragedy of what Mr. Milosevic did to Yugoslavia. If the enlargement of the European Union can prevent such a tragedy from ever happening again, it will be a testament to the European future. Co-operation on trafficking in people and drugs will take place on a scale never before seen, which is welcomed by all member states.

Some people in this country are worried about migration into the UK from these applicant countries, but let us examine the examples of Spain and Portugal. When Spain joined the EU in 1986, 109,000 Spanish workers were based in France. By 1994, the figure had fallen to 35,000. The sort of economic migration that happens through desperation will be inhibited by the development of these applicant countries, which will feel more secure and provide their people with more opportunities.

If we can bring Europe together under the EU, we shall be able to work much more closely with the United States and present a common force for good to the world. We do not want an inward-looking EU of just 25 members, or even an EU that is aligned to the United States of America and just looks after its own economic problems. There are pressing problems in today's world. We need to develop Africa, a continent that is going backwards and has suffered from famine and underdevelopment for hundreds of years. We can begin to deal seriously with the HIV epidemic in southern Africa that will bring death and destruction in many communities. We can begin to look at stabilising the middle east, as the United States and Europe together have the political will and economic might to ensure that that is done in a way that we have never seen before. Most importantly, especially given the problems that we face in Iraq, we can strengthen the United Nations.

The Convention on the Future of Europe will determine the architecture for a Europe of 25. If that Europe can get an architecture of government and method of multinational decision and law making that is far superior to anything that any continent in the world has seen, we can look towards reforming the United Nations. We can work out how it can adopt EU best practice in order to work with organisations such as the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to create world order that provides stability for places such as Africa and Asia and make the world a much better place.

An EU of 25 will give the United Kingdom far more influence. Many applicant countries are Anglo-centric and look to the UK, and the USA, for support and cooperation; militarily in the past and economically, I believe, in the future. The Franco-German axis will decline, and some of Mr. Chirac's recent comments seem like the scream of a dying baby. There will be new dynamics in the decision-making processes as a result of the change in the composition of the Council of Ministers and in the European Parliament. The family of Europe will be reunited.

We look forward to a Europe of peace, prosperity and influence. I welcome the changes that are taking place.

I, too, offer my congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David) on securing the debate. I will not take too much time, but I am grateful to make a contribution to an important debate.

I recognise the importance of the decisions that were taken in Copenhagen on 12 and 13 December and the significant challenges, and benefits, that they bring. My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly identified each country by name, including Poland, and I want to make some comments on my interests in Poland. They go far beyond the fact that my wife comes from a Polish family or that I heard many stories from my late father-in-law about the challenges that Poland faced over the years and the benefits seen in a much-rejuvenated Poland, which my hon. Friend also noted.

In recent informal discussions with the Polish ambassador Stanislaw Komorowski, who has now become a good friend, he told me that he did not see the process of Poland joining the EU as one in which only Poland and the Polish people received the benefits. He saw it as an opportunity for Poland to give something back to the EU, which is an important message. It made me think about the other countries that will join the EU, which, with their individual styles and opportunities, will make their contributions to a much stronger and more stable Europe.

I can mention one obvious opportunity that will arise from Poland's membership. We are all aware of the fact that Poland has large agricultural potential. The development of that potential would release great benefits to the European Union. Everyone accepts, and has commented at one stage or another, that it is hardly acceptable that just over 50 per cent. of the total European budget is spent inefficiently through the common agricultural policy. With Poland becoming a member of the EU, the contribution of its agricultural capability should be seen as an opportunity, not a threat. That is one example of a benefit of membership.

I should like to refer to stability, which other Members have mentioned, and to history. The European challenge of recent times is vastly different from that posed by the Europe that we knew; everyone recognises that. Not too long ago, the shape of the European Union was entirely different. My hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly referred to the number of countries that emerged at the end of the cold war. The break up of the USSR and the situation that arose after Germany became a unified country again all presented different challenges and threats to Europe's shape. The 10 countries in the process of accession will give a strong and good message to other countries in Europe.

When East and West Germany were merged, the hopes of the East Germans were raised considerably during the merger, but were difficult to meet. There is a danger that if a merger is not made quickly, aspiration will quickly turn to disillusionment and to the feeling of being unsettled, which can cause further problems to a Europe that is already experiencing instability. The opportunity for stability offered by enlargement should not be understated.

The fact that we have a larger Europe today gives us greater opportunity to see the benefits of working together; rather than the alternative, which is a referral to the power base of military control. I agree that enlargement gives us the opportunity to tackle challenges differently.

I welcome today's discussion. Much has been said, and the problems facing Africa have been referred to. Opportunities will arise from a strong message being sent from the 10 accession countries, including Bulgaria, Romania, Cyprus and Turkey, the challenges of which have yet to be addressed. With a good success rate for those 10 countries, other challenges can be taken on board.

A dear friend, Bruce Millan, who was a well-respected Commissioner in Europe, once said to me, "If the only reason that you are in Europe, John, is to put £5 in and take £5 out, you are wasting your time. It is much more sophisticated than that." I hope that we get that message out to the public, and debates such as this one and publicity from them are essential. During a surgery that I held last Friday in my constituency, I met 34 constituents in an hour and a half. Not one of them mentioned Turkey, or the fact that Cyprus and Poland were about to become members of the EU. That is significant. The subject is not high on the public agenda, so we must promote the importance of a stable Europe to each and every one of us; not just in the UK, but throughout the world.

I look forward to the annual event that my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly has inaugurated in the hope that, next year, the situation will be much more progressive than it is at present and that we can meet many of the challenges that lie ahead. I also look forward very much to my hon. Friend the Minister's response at the end of the debate.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Central Fife (Mr. MacDougall). He highlighted the fact that the applicant countries see the process as being not simply about taking something from Europe or getting their share of Europe, but about how they can contribute to the process as well. Before I go any further, I congratulate the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David), who has made something of a specialty out of EU enlargement. He has raised it in this Chamber before, and I commend him for doing so again, particularly at this important time.

As has been mentioned, the debate follows on from the seminar that the Minister hosted at the Foreign Office this morning. That welcome initiative reinforces his credentials as one who is keen for the enlargement debate not simply to be dealt with by Ministers and officials, but to be engaged in by Parliament and, indeed, the whole country. As the hon. Member for Central Fife remarked, people do not come to surgeries to complain about EU enlargement. I fear that people in this country know very little about it, so we all have a duty to ensure that that is corrected and that people face some of the big changes that will occur as a result of enlargement in just over a year's time.

The Liberal Democrats, like the other parties represented here, have supported enlargement throughout the process. We believe that the principles that have applied to successive enlargements over the past 50 years also apply to this one. In the past, we have debated quite regularly the underpinning that the EU gives to the security of Europe. For those countries that are about to join and which have, like us, clear and long memories of what war in Europe was all about and the dangers associated with the cold war settlement afterwards, this is a huge breakthrough—a major development for them and us. Often, we run the risk of forgetting just how important keeping the peace in Europe is and the role that the EU as a collection of nation states plays in that endeavour.

For many of the countries about to join the EU, the importance of joining is what it says about the state of their democracy and the opportunity that they have further to enhance their democracies and to instil the values that go with it in the modern form of their countries. Perhaps the most often cited and important aspect of enlargement in most people's eyes, however, is the economic benefits that will flow from it. There are many different estimates of the impact that enlargement will have, but recent ones raise the possibility of 300,000 additional jobs throughout the EU and a substantial boost of some £2 billion to overall GDP. At the seminar that the Minister hosted this morning, the director-general of the CBI, Digby Jones, talked about the enlargement giving Europe more clout. That is always welcome in the world, particularly in the era of the WTO and developments in trade that are so important to all our communities.

Since we had a chance to debate this topic here last year, much has changed. As the hon. Member for Caerphilly pointed out, huge progress was made at the Copenhagen summit just before the end of the year. The European Parliament will soon consider the accession treaties, which each member state will then consider. Referendums in each of the applicant countries are due to be held by September. There was considerable concern about what had to be achieved when we debated the issue 12 months ago, and we must not underestimate what has been covered since then. However, it would be equally remiss of us to ignore some of the key issues that remain to be resolved in the next year or so.

Internally, enlargement presents a great challenge to existing member states. Some 10 days ago, I was in Brussels holding discussions with various officials and Commission departments and directorates. It is clear that the issue is focusing minds like nothing else. There are huge issues to be resolved in key areas such as the CAP and regional policy before 2004—the 10 new states should come on board in May, the European Parliament elections are due in June, and the new Commission will be announced later that year.

The officials whom I met in Brussels talked a very confident game about sorting out the details of the reform of the CAP in time for the June Agriculture Council. I would be interested to know the Minister's opinion, because if those details are sorted out, we will have to make substantial progress in a very short space of time on key issues such as decoupling, modulation and degressivity, all of which remain unresolved issues of concern in the United Kingdom.

The same is true of regional policy. The third cohesion report is due later in the year, as are the recommendations on the development of the policy. I understand that recommendations and contributions to that process are due by the summer break, and I hope that the Minister and his colleagues in other Departments will ensure that they and each interested body throughout the UK participate fully in that debate. The emphasis will shift with enlargement in a year's time, but it is clear that regional policy has an important relevance to this country, especially to peripheral areas. Will the Minister state the Government's policy stance as the negotiations head towards their conclusion?

The focus may be inward for existing members, but there is plenty for the applicant countries to be getting on with. Commissioner Verheugen recently pointed out that there is still a great deal of work to be done to build administrative capacity and to ensure that all the key parts of the Government machinery are in place to deal with issues such as corruption and the integration of minorities in some applicant countries. Much progress has been made on those issues in the course of the enlargement process. All that work must now come together.

Several contributors to today's debate highlighted issues relating to particular applicant countries. It is right that we spend time considering Cyprus, where affairs are very delicately balanced. We should pay tribute to the work of Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, who has invested a considerable amount of his own time and prestige to the creation and development of the proposals currently before the two communities in Cyprus. His initiative is important and we now await the response from the two parts of the island. As has been mentioned, 10 March is an important new deadline for those developments. We must hope that the prize of enlargement is strong enough, and is on sufficiently good terms, to resolve many difficulties that beset that beautiful place.

However, we cannot ignore the fact that there are issues in countries other than Cyprus that, although less fraught, could also cause problems. The Minister has a great fondness for Poland, which I know is shared by many in the Chamber. We cannot ignore the difficulties facing the Polish Government with the departure of the Polish Peasant party from government. Poland's Prime Minister remains confident that that will not cause any problems for the accession process. I hope that he is right. We wish that country every success.

In other key players, such as the Czech Republic and, in particular, Hungary, there is some nervousness and evidence in opinion polls that support for enlargement is not quite what it once was. I do not believe that the outcome in those countries is seriously in doubt but we, as well as their Governments, must send strong signals from outside to say that we look forward to welcoming them into a larger family of nations in Europe and that we hope that that can be achieved on time.

My final point on individual countries has already been mentioned this afternoon. It is not on applicant countries, but on France. This is not a debate on Iraq, but just as I would deplore efforts by the United States to twist arms and bully people into supporting a particular line, I find it reprehensible that France should attempt to skew the debate and blackmail particular countries on their prospects of joining the EU on account of their position on developments in Iraq. Each of those countries has earned its position in Europe: each has met the tests and criteria and is making strenuous efforts to come to terms with the new Europe of which they will he part. Bullying by one of the oldest members is surely inappropriate, and we must resist attempts to do that.

The enlargement process has often travelled a bumpy road, but we should reflect on the fact that in the past few years—and the past 12 months in particular—the European Union has made fantastic process. We still need to get our own house in order and we must support the applicants. Then, together, we can look forward to seeing a revolutionised European Union in just over a year's time.

I, too, warmly congratulate the lion. Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David) on securing and introducing this debate. He is a passionate advocate of enlargement and enjoys the respect of all hon. Members for that commitment and for his profound knowledge of the subject. Of course, his concerns are shared not only by the House but by the 70 million citizens of the accession countries.

We have had a good debate and I congratulate the hon. Members for Preston (Mr. Hendrick) and for Central Fife (Mr. MacDougall) and the Liberal Democrat Front-Bench spokesman, the hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Moore), on their thoughtful contributions. It was a particular joy to hear from the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz). I remember seeing him selling the attractions of the EU by travelling the country in a bus, which greatly added to the country's political scene, even though, if I remember correctly, his attempts to sell the euro to the British people during that campaign resulted in the greatest quantum leap in lack of support for the euro among the British people seen in the past five years. Nevertheless, it is always a great pleasure to hear from him.

Enlargement is of huge importance, as everyone has said. We hope that it will extend stability and prosperity to many millions of our fellow Europeans. We welcome the outcome at Copenhagen and congratulate the Danish presidency on orchestrating that summit. The process of enlargement has been too long and complicated, and Turkey's membership, which we support, has not been universally encouraged, but Copenhagen was an historic achievement. We hope that next year we shall see the division of Europe that has lasted since Yalta healed. Speaking personally, I believe not only that that is politically and economically desirable, but that it is a moral imperative.

The accession countries have made great strides on their own since the fall of the Berlin wall, but enlargement opens further prospects. Participation will offer the countries full access to a single market and structural funds. Although I am not always an admirer of regional funding from the EU, my discussions with many eastern European politicians, civil servants and business men leave me in no doubt that structural funding offers hope for progress in developing eastern Europe's infrastructure, which needs to be updated in some respects. For example, the hon. Member for Caerphilly will know that Poland's roads are notoriously poor. How much more productive and efficient would Poland's economy be if businesses had access to improved roads?

Enlargement does not only hold out the promise of great economic prosperity for the accession countries: it must be admitted that one of the EU's great successes has been its ability to stabilise young democracies and root them in the ways of a free society. We only need consider the way in which, over time, Greece, Spain and Portugal have succeeded in that respect, and I hope that that will happen for the accession countries as well. Success after enlargement is not assured. All European countries must be in a position to generate wealth, and that will not happen while the EU remains a zone strangled with mounting red tape, afraid of the economic flexibility that creates jobs.

The atypical workers directive is typical of the sort of EU legislation that can only hurt employment creation in the long-term. The EU's high-cost employment practices are the last thing that prospective EU members need. Those countries need to use their currently lower-cost labour forces to build prosperity, and we must let them do so. Regrettably, it is universally recognised throughout the EU that the process that the Prime Minister set in train in Lisbon is stuttering. We must ensure that the EU is fit to meet the challenges posed by enlargement. Otherwise, the accession countries may find that EU membership is more of an economic prison than a liberating market, and heaven forbid that they should ever think that.

The CAP must be fundamentally reformed—something that the Government have lamentably been unable to drive forward. Nothing has made the negotiations on enlargement more bitter than the need to shoehorn the accession states into the failing CAP. Likewise, it has been said to me abroad that the former communist countries do not want to see control from Moscow replaced by control from Brussels. Countries that have only recently regained their independence do not want to use it to enter some sort of supranational state. However, as we saw in the draft constitution, the supranational structures that are being prepared in the Convention on the Future of Europe clearly point to that. I am aware that the final version might look rather different at the intergovernmental conference, but the overall tendency is fundamentally integrationist. That is not the sort of EU in which the new states will feel comfortable.

Indeed, one may question the wisdom of transforming the EU just as the new states arrive. No one should question the need for fundamental reform in the EU—that is widely recognised—but the new states should be full participants in the process. I entirely agree with the hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale. I, too, found France's bullying, implied threats that it might veto the accession countries' EU membership unless they toed the French line absolutely disgraceful. Does the Minister agree with Chris Patten that the EU

"is not the Warsaw pact. It is a club for equals and everyone has to be listened to"?

President Chirac's remarks make it harder for the accession states to participate in the debate on Europe's future as equals. That is an important point.

The president of the Convention on the Future of Europe has said that he wants the Convention treaty to provide the EU's framework for the next 50 years. If the new countries are to live in the house that Giscard and the Convention have built, they have as much right to determine its design as anyone else. For that reason, it is urgent that the IGC agrees that the new treaty should not be decided on until accession countries are full members of the EU. It would certainly be totally unacceptable if the IGC were to take place this December, when full accession was still some months off; that would be inequitable. I hope that the Minister will reflect on that point and respond to it in his winding-up speech.

We have extraordinarily close links with Cyprus. I salute President Clerides and his efforts over many years, and I welcome Tassos Papadopoulos's presidency. I have had the pleasure of meeting him and discussing the reunification of the island with him. That much hoped-for reunification is in danger, even though one of the great hopes of accession was that it would prove a vehicle and stimulus for the island's reunification. We all want the united island to enter the EU.

I hope that the Minister will tell us more about what the Government are doing to assist reunification, particularly at this crucial time. At the very least, the Government have not kept Parliament properly informed about their offer to hand over almost half of the sovereign base areas' territory to a reunited Cyprus. Whatever the Government's motives, the handover of British sovereign territory is serious, and the Government have failed to tell the House all that they should.

Why did the announcement of the offer of British territory come through the UN, when it could have been made in Parliament the next day? Why, in the written answer that the Minister gave me on 27 January, was no hint given that the offer might be made. even though the open nature of the question gave ample opportunity to do so? Was the offer under consideration when the answer was given? Why, when my noble Friend Lord Howell asked on 14 January whether the UN peace plan would affect arrangements for the bases, did the Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Baroness Symons, deny that it would? Was she aware of the offer, and if not, how much time was given to considering the offer before it was made?

What assessment has been made by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Ministry of Defence of the effect that the offer will have on their operational capability, particularly at this crucial time, knowing the strategic importance of Cyprus in the eastern Mediterranean? It was apparent that there was inadequate consultation between the two Departments about Gibraltar, and the Minister for Europe must tell us what consultation the Foreign Office has had with the Ministry of Defence on this matter. Parliament deserves answers, and I hope that the Minister can provide some enlightenment.

My party wants enlargement to succeed. We want an EU that is fit for enlargement and the challenges of the 21st century. It must be flexible enough to accommodate its diversities and must be a union for its peoples, and not its leaders. People must feel a sense of ownership of the EU and its institutions and architecture. The Convention was meant to bring the EU closer to its peoples, but it seems to be doing the contrary, and the Government now seem to be taken aback about their position. All countries should have a referendum on the constitution, and that includes the accession states. That would help to ensure that those states can participate in the debate as equals.

If we can successfully reform Europe's economies, transform the common agricultural policy into something enduring, and—this is crucial—build Europe from the bottom up, not the top down, enlargement will do great things for our continent. I want an enlarged European Union to be a success. To achieve that, we must deal with the problems of today, not the challenges of yesterday.

This has been a very good debate. It is appropriate that it follows an excellent seminar and conference on enlargement at the Foreign Office this morning. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr. David) on securing the debate and hon. Members on the quality of their speeches.

I shall start with the last speech, by the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Mr. Spring), who I believe was in favour of enlargement but did not seem to be terribly much in favour of the European Union. Therein lies the eternal contradiction in Conservative thinking on this great issue.

The remark of President Chirac, whose position is held by many in France, including some of his Ministers, that has most upset people in east Europe is that there should be a referendum on the next stage of European construction. Countries in east Europe are rightly concerned that if the existing nations of the European Union were to hold referendums on the matter—referendums which are not called for under their constitutions—all the anti-Europeans could combine to produce a no vote and enlargement would not take place. I merely caution the hon. Gentleman before he starts running with the referendum line that is put forward by people in this country who are not normally associated with a pro-European position, that he might do a serious disservice to the process of enlargement and the successful working of an enlarged European Union, which are the tasks of the Convention and the intergovernmental conference.

The hon. Gentleman seems to be unaware that a commitment was given at the Copenhagen Council that the incoming member states will be full participants in the intergovernmental conference. They are not voting members of the Convention, but they have observer status there and we look forward to working with them as voting members in the intergovernmental conference.

To return to the main subject of the debate, we had a very powerful speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly, who made the case for enlargement and stressed that it is a win-win process. We really must break free of the mentality that it is in some way a zero sum game, in which Britain and other member countries will lose.

That point was also very powerfully made by my hon. Friend the Member for Central Fife (Mr. MacDougall), who, like me, has a Polish family connection. It has been remarkable to see the Polish community in Great Britain turn with enthusiasm to the leadership offered by the Prime Minister. They realise that the enlargement of the European Union for which he has fought so valiantly is good for their native country. Last Friday, the Polish ambassador, who is one of the most dynamic and effective ambassadors in London, and I had the pleasure of opening Sheffield's Europe week at the Dom Kombatanta ex-servicemen's club for Polish veterans. It was a very lively and positive occasion.

We had a contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), whom I had the honour to serve as a Parliamentary Private Secretary in two of the more interesting, ebullient and, at times, turbulent years in the office of the Minister for Europe during this or any previous Administration. Yes, he boldly went into the countryside with buses, certificates, flare and fun and challenged the British people to think seriously about Europe. With his inside knowledge, he was able to describe the immense complexities of day-to-day business. I long for the time when speeches are not read out by rote and when our very bright officials who work for the Foreign Office and, though British nationals, as European civil servants for the European Commission and Council are not buried under paper.

The hon. Member for West Suffolk (Mr. Spring) mentioned the campaign bus. Of course, the bus went to Rotherham. Was he upset that it did not go to Bury St. Edmunds?

That is not in my constituency.

The first roadshow took place in my constituency, Rotherham, and I think that I can safely say that it was downhill all the way after that.

Some important points were made about the need for parliamentarians to build networks and links. I have been holding talks with the British Council and have asked about arranging seminars that involve parliamentarians of all parties—this is not a party-political issue building links with their opposite numbers in the incoming countries. It was also suggested that an EU agency or institution might be moved to east Europe or one of the incoming member states. I am sure that they will be the first in the queue when the new agencies are allocated. If, as we hope, Malta and Cyprus come into the EU after their referendums—and how much we long for a united Cyprus to do that—two Commonwealth countries will be added to the membership. Their accession will re-orient some of the focus of the EU towards the Mediterranean. In recent years, there has—rightly—been an obsession with east and central Europe, but the EU also has a great role to play in the Mediterranean.

As I have plenty of time in which to speak, I would like to commend a book that I have just received called "Orient Express", Published by Oxford Brookes university. It was edited by Fiona Sampson, who writes:

"as Europe shifts on her axis again, the critical mass of the E.U. Enlargement Countries is what engenders this shift. And resists the forces of globalisation by its insistence on the particular, on the coloured-in detail of what is characteristic."

The book is a collection of novels, short stories, poems and essays and shows the immense cultural contribution that will be made by the enlargement countries and to which we can look forward. The advantage for us is that, on the whole, if people from those countries have a second language, it is likely to be English, which will provide a further set of bridges between our great European country and the new, but at the same time very old, European countries and cultures that are about to join us.

As always, my hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Mr. Hendrick) made a very positive speech. I hope that the Foreign Office will shortly announce further work to promote the value of enlargement and the need for Britain not only to be the champion of enlargement, but to build enduring economic and political links—we are also talking about local government—with the incoming countries. I hope that hon. Members from all parties will want to play a part in that policy.

The hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale (Mr. Moore) had some rather harsh words to say about the President of the French Republic. I invite him to come to the annual general meeting of the Franco-British Council, which will take place in two hours at the Foreign Office. Some four or five months ago, I accepted an invitation to give the keynote speech under the heading "France and Britain: towards a new era of co-operation in international and foreign policy", which just goes to show that my speech this afternoon is merely a curtain-raiser to what is, in some ways, a more interesting challenge lying ahead.

Judging from the position adopted by the Liberal Democrats and certainly their leader, I rather thought that the hon. Gentleman was lining up with President Chirac in not supporting the view of Her Majesty's Government that firm action must be taken against the dictator, terrorist and tyrant of Baghdad.

Will the Minister give way?

Will the Minister give way?

I will take the intervention from the representative of the biggest Opposition party.

I want to take up a point that I thought was legitimately made by the hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz), who talked about moving some of the European Union's institutions to a base further from its western side. Could the Minister suggest to our French partners this afternoon that European taxpayers could save themselves a vast amount of money by closing down Strasbourg and moving it further east?

The notion that I have the power to close down any city is flattering but, alas, it is beyond my capability to do so. The plain answer is no. Strasbourg is the seat of European reconciliation. It was agreed in the treaty signed by the hon. Gentleman's former boss, the former right hon. Member for Huntingdon, when he was Prime Minister that 12 plenary sessions would take place in Strasbourg. Therefore, once again, the Government are stuck with treaties signed by the Conservative party in a fit of pro-Strasbourg passion.

The hon. Member for Tweeddale, Ettrick and Lauderdale is right: both centres need to be reformed, and both will be under huge pressure to reform. I warn him only that it cannot be assumed that all the incoming members will automatically be on the side of reform, especially of the CAP. When the cheques arrive from Brussels, that immediately becomes a seductive inducement to favour the CAP. That is why I have always said that it is no use this country and this House endlessly condemning the CAP—we are all in agreement on that. Instead, we must find ways of building alliances with our sister parties, our national farmers' unions must find ways of discussing the matter with other countries' farmers' organisations, and the Churches, Oxfam and other non-governmental organisations must find ways of talking in French and Spanish with their opposite numbers to build a coalition for effective reform.

The same is true of regional funds. Clearly, the incoming members will reduce average GDP per capita of the EU as a whole. Many of the regions of the UK that have become eligible for forms of regional funds will lose that eligibility. We must now have a serious discussion about funding and support for the regional development that we as a country want, and how we factor those ideas into the wider European question.

We should welcome enlargement. I was impressed by the speech of Digby Jones, the director-general of the Confederation of British Industry, at this morning's seminar when he talked movingly about his visit to east and central Europe. He said that, although those with whom he spoke were pro-trade and pro-business, they also saw the European Union in terms of peace and democracy. We should not lose sight of that idealism and those values. The EU is founded on the principle of establishing peace in our continent. At a time when there is much talk of war, it is no bad thing to remind ourselves of the dictatorship and terror that Europe has seen in our lifetime, and the wars that it saw in our parents' lifetime.

Was my hon. Friend, like me, impressed by what Digby Jones said about the harmonisation of technical standards and regulations across Europe and the way in which that, together with the work that has gone on at the European institutions, had made the European single market successful?

Indeed, and reference was made this morning to an article in, I think, today'sFinancial Times by two American Republican spokespersons, who said that the argument is not for or against regulation the primitive caricature that we heard in one closing speech today—but about the type of regulation that is introduced. There are times when regulation is necessary. For example, to guarantee safety in aviation is the only way to liberalise air markets.

We do not want to go back to each country in Europe erecting its own norms and standards and refusing to admit commerce and trade in goods, services and economic exchange unless they correspond to purely nationally defined norms. It costs Europe far less financially, politically and socially to support its neighbours' transitions to stable democracies and open economies than to rebuild them after conflict. Compare how much money we had to spend after the Milosevic savagery in the former Yugoslavia with the relatively painless and much less costly entry of Slovenia into the European Union.

I was asked about Croatia. Both Croatia and Macedonia have recently made applications to be considered as applicant countries. They will be treated in the same way as other applicant countries, but I believe that in the case of Croatia, the road to Europe lies through The Hague. In my judgment, strong compliance with the demand that those in Croatia who are alleged to have committed war crimes be sent to The Hague would undoubtedly speed up Croatia's being taken seriously as an applicant for formal EU accession.

Membership of' the EU will bring immediate economic benefits to the new member states. It will create a single market of 450 million people and there will be new markets for UK business. UK exports to central Europe increased by 19 per cent. between 1999 and 2000, and by 25 per cent. with the Czech Republic and Hungary in the same period. There are 15,000 British companies exporting to or investing in the region.

However, the preparations for enlargement are already obliging all those in the existing and the incoming member states to raise our standards so that we can tackle jointly the problems that cross borders, including pollution, drug smuggling and people trafficking. Candidates are making major improvements to air and water quality to meet EU standards. Beaches around Cyprus, where nearly 1.5 million UK tourists go each year, are being brought up to EU standards. Thanks to co-operation between UK and Czech officials, a major drugs-related money-laundering operation was closed down a couple of years ago. We need to keep working to maintain those levels of cooperation.

I conclude by turning to the important matter of Cyprus. I will seek to address the points raised by the hon. Member for West Suffolk. who sneaked the issue of sovereign base areas into the debate. I am happy to write to him in detail. I would have been happy to make a statement in the House had I been asked to. I am content that the decisions taken late in the day when I replied to the question to which he referred, I knew nothing of the proposal were made in good faith to show British willingness to contribute to arriving at an agreement that will be supported by both the Turkish and the Greek-Cypriot communities on the island.

Our policy is that we want a united Cyprus to join the European Union. We think that the Annan proposals, for which the jargon term is "Annan 3", deserve support. We hope that Mr. Denktash and President Papadopoulos will support them and that their colleagues and friends in Athens and Ankara will also make it clear that Cyprus is going to enter the European Union under any conditions—

Order. I was thinking that the reference made by the Minister to British policy towards Cyprus is only relevant to the debate in that it contributes to a solution to the Cyprus problem, which means that a united Cyprus can enter the enlarged Europe. Will the Minister bear that in mind?

You are quite right, Mr. Deputy Speaker. No one has greater knowledge of the Hellenic aspects of the Cypriot question than you. It is important to stress—as Commissioner Verheugen did this morning—that we want a united Cyprus to enter the European Union, but if for any reason Mr. Denktash or others fail to agree to the Annan proposals, Cyprus will still enter the European Union. That is an important point that is worth putting clearly on the record. It is one aspect of European Union enlargement that I hope is contributing to a more secure east Mediterranean.

The Government will work to support enlargement. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly on securing this important debate.

I am grateful for the chance to debate this issue of great humanitarian importance and current controversy. The debate centres on section 55 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which reads:

"(1) The Secretary of State may not provide or arrange for the provision of support to a person under a provision mentioned in subsection (2) if

(a) the person makes a claim for asylum which is recorded by the Secretary of State, and

(b) the Secretary of State is not satisfied that the claim was made as soon as reasonably practicable after the person's arrival in the United Kingdom."

I want to concentrate on the phrase

"as soon as reasonably practicable"

this afternoon. Before going any further I want to stress that the debate is not intended to be a swipe at or indeed a criticism of the Government. My aim is to be helpful by pointing out that that phrase has had unintended consequences on genuine refuges fleeing persecution in their native countries.

I represent a highly multicultural constituency, as my hon. Friend the Minister will know. In the eight advice surgeries that I hold each month around north-east Leeds, I see many asylum and immigration cases. From time to time I come across cases where the asylum system has been abused by those who fail to have visas extended or, as the Home Secretary has said, have tried to use the asylum system to gain financial support when they have run out of other options. I support the principle that Parliament should discourage those who seek to exploit this country's hitherto generous support for asylum seekers for their own dishonest purposes. I know that that was the intention of the Act.

However, the reality has been somewhat different. I believe that that is because the phrase

"as soon as reasonably practicable"

has sometimes been unreasonably interpreted by officials in immigration centres throughout the country, and especially in Leeds where my sample cases are based and where I am a parliamentary representative.

The immigration centre to which I refer is in Waterside, Kirkstall road, west Leeds, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle). In that centre, as in many others throughout the country, the interpretation of section 55 of the 2002 Act, since it came into force on 8 January this year, has forced destitute new asylum seekers on to the streets of Leeds. Were it not for the generosity and humanity of church members who are involved in the refugee education, training and advice service in Leeds, many more people fleeing persecution in their own countries would be homeless and freezing on the streets of Leeds. As of yesterday, 73 such persons were destitute without support from the National Asylum Support Service.

I understand that there has been a temporary relaxation since Mr. Justice Collins gave his judgment on 19 February and that many of those who were destitute are now in official centres. However, there is deep concern about what would happen if the Home Secretary won his appeal and those people had to be ejected from their accommodation. The judgment was on the cases of six asylum seekers who had been refused support under the 2002 Act and who made a claim under the European convention on human rights. The judgment angered the Home Secretary who, not unreasonably, felt that it was the job of Parliament to make the laws of the land and to debate those laws and that it was not the job of the courts to undermine that legislation. The Home Secretary appealed and we await the outcome of that appeal, which was heard yesterday.

Section 55 was introduced as a Government amendment to the Bill in the House of Lords and was not mentioned in the preceding White Paper. Introducing the Government amendment, Lord Filkin said:

"The new clause ends the presumption of support for those who apply for asylum in country unless they can give a truthful and credible account of their circumstances and how they arrived here and can therefore demonstrate that they are claiming asylum at the earliest possible opportunity."—[Official Report. House of Lords, 17 October 2002: Vol. 639, c. 978.]

On 5 November, the Home Secretary said:

"The question is how reasonable we are regarding the people who come here but do not claim asylum at the port of entry. We need to be reasonable and to take into account the trauma that people experience. We need therefore to allow a reasonable period before we presume that people have come into the country for another reason and have been sustaining themselves and that when they could no longer do so they decided that the asylum system would sustain them, being far more generous than the equivalent something-for-something, welfare-to-work system."—[Official Report, 5 November 2002; Vol. 392, c. 199.]

Following Royal Assent on 7 November 2002, my hon. Friend the Minister made a written statement to the High Court about section 55, in which she said that it would come into force on 8 January 2003. She said:

"It will not be acceptable for an asylum seeker wanting NASS support to postpone making an asylum claim unless there is a very good reason for doing so. Even if there is a good reason for not claiming asylum immediately on arrival at the port, the person must then claim asylum as soon as possible thereafter."

She went on to say that the Secretary of State must be satisfied

"that the person claiming support has made the asylum claim as soon as reasonably practicable after arrival in the United Kingdom."

I now want to demonstrate that a number of individuals who, for one reason or another arrived in the city of Leeds, made their asylum claim as soon as was reasonably practical after their arrival in the UK and yet were denied any support under the 2002 Act.

As my hon. Friend the Minister knows, often the only way for someone suffering extreme persecution to flee their country is to use what we would call people traffickers; men and women who make a living out of supplying forged documents and enabling those desperate to leave their countries to go to places where they will be safe and can find refuge. Historically, Britain has offered refuge to so many people who have suffered persecution, yet the problem is reaching an unmanageable proportion and the Prime Minister has pledged that the numbers of applicants will be halved by the end of the year.

I will not give the real names of the individuals whose cases I recount. Marie is a 33-year-old French-speaking woman from Cameroon, which is officially listed as a safe country. She was held in prison for 12 years as an opposition activist, along with her husband, who has now disappeared. While in prison she was tortured; she was finally released in autumn 2002. She believes that her husband is probably now dead but has no way of finding out what happened to him.

Shortly after her release, she received a police summons ordering her to appear at the local police station. Not unnaturally, she was very frightened and her mother advised her to leave the country as soon as she could. She sold her family home and paid the money to a trafficker—often called an agent by refugees—to get her to French-speaking Quebec in Canada. Although she is not Muslim, she was told by the Libyan agent to dress as a Muslim woman and wear a burqa, and she was brought to London via Algeria. She was told that she had arrived in Montreal and was not allowed to keep her false passport. She was virtually imprisoned in London for two weeks by the agent's wife, after which she was brought to Leeds on a train.

While they were walking through the station concourse in Leeds, the agent told her that he had left his wallet on the train and ran back to fetch it. He said he would be a few minutes but, surprise, surprise, he never returned, leaving the woman stranded in Leeds city station without even knowing what country she was in. Marie cannot read or write; she speaks no English. After two hours she found some French-speaking people who told her she was in the north of England. She was taken to the refugee council in Leeds and then to Waterside, where she registered her application for asylum. Support was refused; either because officials did not believe her story or because she had not registered "as soon as was reasonably practicable". Currently, church members in Leeds are looking her after.

I would argue that Marie could not have been expected to claim asylum any earlier. She had genuinely believed she was in Canada until her arrival in Leeds. She had been told that she would not reach Quebec if she left the house in London, which she thought was in Montreal. I do not believe that her delay was unreasonable.

Rezgar is an Iraqi Kurd who has a serious speech impediment and is illiterate. He finds it hard to communicate, even in his own language, because many Kurds think that he is mentally ill when they hear him speak. He was deposited in Leeds from the lorry that brought him illegally to the United Kingdom, without being told where he was.

Rezgar spent three days sleeping rough on the streets of the city before finding a road sweeper who was a Kurdish speaker and took him to the police station, from where he was able to report to Waterside. It took him more than three hours to give the most basic information, after which he was told that he was applying too late to receive NASS support. I am glad to say that that decision was reversed three weeks later and Rezgar now receives that support but, in the meantime, he had to rely on the charity of local people. Was his delay really unreasonable?

My third case is that of Camille, who came to Leeds from the Democratic Republic of Congo—formerly Zaire—to find her mother, who had last been heard of in Leeds. Again, she came illegally on forged documents, because she was being persecuted for her political opposition to the regime in the Democratic Republic of Congo. That regime is known for its cruelty and persecution of the opposition. She was accompanied through immigration at Heathrow by her so-called agent, and then taken on the underground to central London, where she was put on a coach to Leeds.

Camille is educated, articulate and intelligent. I met her three weeks ago and heard her story at first hand. I speak French; she speaks no English. On arrival in Leeds, she asked for directions to Waterside. It took two hours for her to walk there, and once she had registered for asylum she was told that she had registered too late to be given any support. She was told how to find St. George's crypt, a church project for the homeless and destitute in central Leeds. She walked there, only to find that there were no beds available that night. She was given some food and a sleeping bag, and told to sleep on a park bench. It was a Friday night.

After three nights outdoors and being fed by the St. George's crypt project during the day, Camille managed to contact the refugee education, training and advice service, whose volunteers took her in and looked after her. The story has a happy ending, because her new friends managed to locate her mother in Coventry, where she now lives, having been given refugee status herself. However, I would argue that Camille's delay in registering was not unreasonable.

The response of the church network of volunteers to the growing number of asylum seekers on the streets of Leeds is, "We will do better than our Government." If people with genuine stories such as those are made destitute by section 55 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, it is frustrating that a measure designed, quite reasonably in my view, to deter those who attempt to exploit our system, is forcing refugees with the most harrowing histories to become beggars on our streets, whether in Leeds or any other major city in the United Kingdom.

My reason for this debate is to ask the Minister to reexamine the guidance given to NASS officials. The guidance already says that each case must be considered on its merits, although none of the cases of which I have spoken appears to have been so considered. It also says that a person's circumstances must be taken into account.

Christopher Mace, the deputy director general of the immigration and nationality directorate of the Home Office, said in his statement, submitted by the Home Secretary to the High Court last month:

"If those arriving at ports know that they must apply for asylum at the port then it will deter facilitators [so-called 'agents] from bringing asylum seekers to the UK and thereby significantly reduce the incidence of this serious offence."

He said that the most frequent reason for failing to claim asylum at a port is obedience to the facilitator's instructions. However, as we have seen from the three cases that I mentioned, such a measure has made no difference to the people traffickers. As for the refugees themselves, how can they know what the rules are, if many cannot read, write or speak English?

My contention is that the Act, designed, rightly, to deter dishonest asylum seekers, is being unreasonably interpreted so that it ensures the complete destitution of many genuine asylum seekers. Even if a case subsequently fails, surely the UK can be more humane in the way in which it treats such people? The most important issue is to ensure the speedy processing of claims, rather than starving successful and failed asylum seekers alike or aiming to prevent them from coming here in the first place.

Finally, I hope that the Minister will be able to issue new guidance to officials, requesting that an interpretation of the phrase

"as soon as reasonably practicable"

is not made unreasonably.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton) for introducing this sensitive subject and inviting me to say a few words in support. I also thank the Minister for her close attention to this complex and difficult issue. I hope that my remarks and those of my hon. Friend will help her to move forward rather than be obstructive.

Waterside is in my constituency, as are Leeds' main reception centre and a significant number of NASS agency houses for asylum seekers. I deal with individual cases every weekend, but the circumstances are much more difficult to manage if those who arrive by any means—many do not enter via our ports—are cut off from the customary systems with no options, no income, no home, no resources and no real friends, and forced out on the streets in the city centre at precisely the time that the Government and Leeds city council have done so well in tackling and reducing street homelessness.

During the Christmas recess, my hon. Friend and I spent a night out with the police, examining rough sleepers in the city centre. We found young people with homes to go to—many, tragically, drug addicts—out on the streets to acquire drugs or just for company. However, one city centre church voluntary project, which has provided a crypt facility with night hospitality for nearly 70 years, was recently refurbished and relaunched to tackle the problem of those remaining on the streets. The aim is to connect people back to the support systems to enable them to restart their lives.

The services of the St. George's crypt voluntary project are now overwhelmed by homeless asylum seekers who are sleeping rough and completely locked out from access to other support systems. Such people, if they are deemed not to have applied immediately, cannot be referred to social services or receive the income assistance of social security. The project now feels undermined in its objectives. It needs to be able to tell these people where they can go and who will be expected to support them, but it cannot.

Good-willed individuals, desperate to help the excluded asylum seekers, are put into an incredibly difficult position, receiving no assistance in the task of deciding whom to help by taking them into their homes, or, subsequently, how to help people on to the support systems. Adhering hard and fast to the rules causes problems; there seems to be no way out for anyone in this position.

I appreciate that we need a fair and firmly applied rule system with rules that are clearly understood by all parties, but I wholly support my hon. Friend and gently ask the Minister whether we can re-examine the unintended consequences that are so clearly undermining other social objectives and social inclusion in our cities.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East (Mr. Hamilton) on securing the debate and on the way in which he expressed his concerns this afternoon. Before I respond, I pay tribute to his diverse constituency work, and I want to assure him that I understand his problems; I am a constituency Member, too. My hon. Friend raised legitimate concerns that he is wholly free to express.

I should also like to thank the Yorkshire and Humberside consortium, which works in a strong partnership with us in trying to provide services and coordinate the work that we do together with the immigration and nationality directorate. This strong consortium does a great deal of good work.

As my hon. Friend said, the interpretation of section 55 is currently under consideration by the Court of Appeal, so it would not be appropriate for me to comment in detail on the way that we have operated the policy since it came into force on 8 January. Notwithstanding that, I hope that I can respond to some of the important points that he raised today.

I remind the Chamber that when Mr. Justice Collins handed down his judgment in the High Court on 19 February, he did not find that section 55 was unlawful or incompatible with the Human Rights Act 1998 or with any of our obligations under international law. His findings were that the circumstances of each case should be investigated in greater depth than he understood had been the case so far and that there should be more detailed questioning to give the claimant the opportunity to explain himself convincingly if he could. On the challenges to section 55 under the ECHR, he found that inquiries should be made to try to establish whether any support was likely to exist. Otherwise, there will normally be the risk that to leave someone destitute would violate articles 3 and 8.1 of the convention. Of course, all findings are subject to the judgment of the Court of Appeal.

I should like to explain briefly some of the background to the Government's decision to introduce section 55 during the passage of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. It is one of several measures in that Act designed to overhaul fundamentally the immigration and asylum system. The aim was to tighten the process by getting claims considered and decisions made at a much earlier stage, and to ensure that support goes to those who need it. The real point of section 55 is to try to change people's behaviour so that asylum seekers make a claim immediately on arrival in the UK and, partly through that, to try to crack the power and control that some of the traffickers—to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, North-East referred—have over people.

There is a clear difference between economic migrants and those fleeing persecution, and I am grateful that my hon. Friend acknowledged that it is not acceptable for people to claim asylum after being in the United Kingdom for some weeks or months simply as a way of staying here at the taxpayers' expense or of delaying removal. It is reasonable for us to expect people who flee persecution to claim asylum as soon as they get to the UK as a safe country, so section 55 prevents the Home Secretary from providing support to asylum seekers who have not made their claim when they arrive at a port in the UK or, if that is not possible for any good reason, as soon as possible afterwards. The provision is not retrospective, so those who applied for asylum before 8 January are not affected, but it applies to those who arrived in the United Kingdom before 8 January but did not make a claim by then.

My hon. Friend referred to my written statement of 28 November, which attempted to clarify the way in which section 55 would be implemented. I will not say that it is not a tough policy; it is a tough policy, and is meant to be. However, it has been applied fairly and there are important safeguards. Families with children are exempt, as are those who can show that they suffered treatment contrary to the European convention on human rights. Those with special needs continue to be supported by local authorities under the National Assistance Act 1948.

Before I turn to the specific points raised by my hon. Friend, it might help to explain briefly the way in which section 55 decisions on the timeliness of asylum claims have been made by caseworkers since 8 January. That is at the crux of his concern. Each case has been considered on its own merits, and decisions have been based on a thorough assessment of the individual circumstances and the credibility of the case as presented by the applicant during the screening interview. I accept that that involves caseworkers making a judgment on credibility, but there is no way around that. As my hon. Friend acknowledged, some people make up stories while others tell the truth, but we have to make a judgment about that credibility to take a decision. However, all section 55 decisions to refuse support are referred to the central NASS team in Croydon to ensure fairness and consistency in the decision-taking process. All decisions taken by caseworkers are reviewed at a senior level before they are confirmed. I stress that it is open to individuals to ask for their case to be reconsidered if there is further evidence, a change of circumstances or information that they believe has not been taken into account.

I do not know the identity of the people involved in the cases to which my hon. Friend referred, so I have not been able to review the immigration and nationality directorate's records to examine the caseworker's reasoning. I cannot comment easily on the individual decisions taken, even if it were appropriate to do so in this forum.

My hon. Friend made a compelling case for the French-speaking woman from Cameroon, but it is not easy to accept at face value how someone capable of finding an agent to get her to French-speaking Quebec in Canada, who then got to the United Kingdom, spent a fortnight in a house in London, and travelled by train to Leeds can end up having no idea that she was in Leeds, not in Montreal. I am not making a judgment, but it is unsurprising that, in the circumstances that my hon. Friend described and in the absence of any corroboration, the conclusion was that her story did not add up. That is why support was refused.

Does my hon. Friend accept that one of the main ways in which traffickers do their business is to take the identity documents away from the person who has paid them to bring them to the country in the first place? The individual is unable to produce the evidence that he might have to present to an immigration officer.

I accept that that is the norm, but identity is not crucial to the case. The caseworker would have tried to obtain information about the details of the journey—its course and what had happened—to corroborate the story. I am saying simply that it does not surprise me that the caseworker found that the story did not add up in the absence of any corroborative information to try to verify that journey and the point at which the person entered the country.

I entirely understand my hon. Friend's point about the second case of the Iraqi Kurd. Although the process seems to have taken three weeks, a positive point to make is that the decision was reversed once additional evidence had been presented. I am comforted by the fact that the system that we put in place, which would be amenable to a change of decision, has operated successfully. However, I take his point.

My hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle) made a very important point about the impact of failed asylum seekers and others in our communities, and how that cuts across some of our other important objectives for community relations and cohesions. It is difficult to resolve. Section 4 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 provides for accommodation-only support, especially for people whose application failed but who cannot return because there is no route through to, say, northern Iraq. People are often offered accommodation, but they do not take it because it is not exactly where they want it. However, I am happy to reconsider his point if there is anything that we can do to help the voluntary organisations dealing with this problem.

Finally, my hon. Friend asked me to re-examine the guidance given to NASS. We must wait for the judgment in order to do that but, subject to that judgment, we may well have to do it.

This is an extremely timely debate, given the beginning of the financial year and the education funding settlement that will kick in within some three and a half weeks for Leicestershire and elsewhere. I welcome in particular my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Mr. Tredinnick), because they, too, can testify to the enormous groundswell of opinion against the Government's funding for Leicestershire.

"Education, education, education"; that was the old mantra. On 13 February, the Minister for School Standards, who is here today, said:

"I remind the House that the Government have put their money where their mouth is with the most sustained increases in funding for a century…There will be £1,000 extra for the average school pupil by 2005-06".—[Official Report, 13 February 2003; Vol. 399, c. 1074-5.]

I do not know who the average school pupil is, but he or she is not in Leicestershire.

The voters—parents, teachers and governors —believed the Government's mantras. Naive as I may be, I, too, at least believed up to a point that more money was going into education. After all, we have paid an enormous amount of tax, so we would at least expect that education funding would increase and that our children in Leicestershire would receive a better education. However, the Government obviously believe that if they say something often enough, people will believe it.

A report on the BBC website on 28 February stated:

"A spokesman for the Department for Education and Skills said local education authorities had been guaranteed a minimum increase of 3.2 per cent. per pupil."

I have also heard it said that no schools will be worse off. However, that is not true in Leicestershire. People may have believed what was said, but in fact they are worse off. They are getting less than 3.2 per cent. per pupil and they are very cross.

Leicestershire has the lowest funding settlement in the country. It is not 3.2 per cent., as we were promised, but 2.5 per cent. I have gone into this in some detail, because the Minister should know about it. This has to do with the way in which the base was calculated. It was calculated on the extra money for post-16 education, which the area is not getting in the coming financial year. That will end up, throughout the county, in a 1 per cent. cut in real terms to education funding in schools.

The background is worth considering briefly. Leicestershire used to be the second worst funded education authority for primary education and the fourth worst funded for secondary education. The saga of the standard spending assessment and the F40 group, of which I and, I think, my hon. Friends were members, is also worth remembering. I went to various meetings with Ministers, mostly before the present Minister got into the House. We finally heard that the SSA for education was to be changed, and a good job, too. We were to have instead the education formula spending share; the FSS. Leicestershire has 80,000 pupils, and the number in education is growing, because it is a vibrant and prosperous area. It also gets good results. I believe that we are right at the top for key stage 3.

There has been a long campaign in Leicestershire in this respect, both before the SSA was scrapped and since the formula started to be introduced. I have had innumerable letters from parents, governors and teachers throughout the county. In January, there was a meeting, which I did not attend, with the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the hon. Member for Harrow, East (Mr. McNulty). The meeting was attended by two head teachers, including the head teacher of Lutterworth grammar school in my constituency, the leader of the county council, Mr. Harry Barber, and, I think, Mr. Ivan Ould, who is responsible for education at the county council. I am told that they had a "courteous hearing". The concern is not new. There has been a long campaign and still, after some 10 years, one gets a courteous hearing.

I have been raising this subject since 1992, when there was a Conservative Government. The situation was bad enough then, but it has got markedly worse since 1997.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on pressing for this debate. Is he aware that, since 1997, when Labour came to power, schools in Leicestershire have lost 9 per cent. of their funding? Does he not think that that is disgraceful?

Indeed. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. The average funding per pupil throughout the county has fallen by 9 per cent. against the average.

Since the announcement of the recent settlement, I have received letters from all over my constituency. I shall not list all the schools and places from which people have come—that is a Liberal Democrat trick—but I shall refer to some of them later. I want to give the Minister and the Chamber a flavour of the settlement. The figures for the education FSS are derived by taking a basic amount per pupil with top-ups for deprivation, area costs and sparsity. That seems relatively sensible, but in Leicestershire, the increase is the lowest in the country. The proposed settlement gives an increase in total education FSS of 6.6 per cent. compared with the national average of 6.5 per cent. That sounds jolly good, but that is because we had a large increase in pupil numbers, mainly three-year-olds. In terms of the FSS per pupil, we have the minimum increase. The floor is supposed to be 3.2 per cent., but it becomes 2.5 per cent. in Leicestershire. The Education Authority is passporting the whole of the 2.5 per cent. increase. That does not meet spending pressures or represent real-terms protection as promised.

The response to the F40 parent and teacher campaign has been ignored. The disparity between the best and worst standard authorities is widening, not narrowing, and we believe, as does the education authority, that the basic entitlement per pupil should be higher to maintain and improve attainment across the board.

In Leicestershire, we educate 4,100 city children who—day in, day out—cross the border into Leicestershire because they receive a better education there but do not bring the money with them. If they did, there would be an extra £500-plus per pupil as they cross the border. The figure for Leicestershire is £2,932 per pupil; the figure for Leicester city, which is just across the Braunstone lane from my constituency, is £3,476 per pupil, a difference of £543. If every pupil in Leicestershire were funded as pupils in the city are funded, there would be almost £52 million extra for education in Leicestershire.

What possible justification can there be for that? I understand that area cost adjustments take account of the cost of housing. The cost of housing is certainly not lower in Leicestershire than across the border in Northamptonshire or Warwickshire. The cost of employing a teacher is exactly the same, the cost of buying a computer is exactly the same and the cost of maintaining a school is exactly the same, so how does the disparity arise?

I want to turn to Winstanley high school where I am going to a meeting on Friday that has been called by the governors. The governors from 30-odd schools in Blaby district have been asked to attend, which is a daunting prospect for me. In Winstanley high school, 20 per cent. of the pupils come from the city and the head teacher told me—I want to be fair to the Government where fairness is due—that they have received targeting funding and capital funding. That is great, but they do not receive core funding; the proper budget. What does that mean for schools such as Winstanley high school?

In every school, teacher pay is rising by 2.9 per cent. under a national agreement. The Minister and I both welcome that, because teachers are not overpaid, even with the 2.9 per cent. increase. Pensions are rising and I also welcome that. However, national insurance is rising from 1 April, as every school knows because schools, as well as teachers, must pay the increase. That tax, with superannuation and increased pay, means that there will be on-costs related to pay. Swinford primary school, which is in the south of my constituency, calculated that after the increase in pay, the on-costs, which used to be 14 per cent. of teachers' pay, will rise to 23 per cent. That is a hell of a lot of money for a small primary school to find, and it is concerned that it may have reduce the number of classes from four to three. However, there cannot be more than 30 pupils in a class, as that would be against the law.

At the same time, there are plans for out-of-class assistance so that teachers can spend more time out of class. Again, that is laudable. It should allow teachers to spend more time on preparation, but where is the money coming from? I am afraid that schools in Leicestershire will not be able to employ the much-heralded support staff. From Braunstone town, Swinford, Lutterworth Sherrier primary school, Brockington high school and Countesthorpe Greenfield primary school, governors and parents are writing to me, and there is real bewilderment. I assure the Minister that many of them will have voted Labour, but they are upset and are becoming angry.

This is the worst settlement for the whole country. It is bad enough this year with school funding on the floor; they would have received even less if there had not been a floor. What will happen next year? That is cause for concern. Are there any grounds for hope?

During the summer there was the fiasco over the Criminal Records Bureau. Leicestershire county council asked at the beginning of the autumn term for £25,000 to meet costs. It has yet to receive a response from the Minister's Department. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bosworth (Mr. Tredinnick) said, since May 1997—I say this just in case the Conservatives are accused, as we usually are, of doing everything wrong—Leicestershire schools have become 9 per cent. worse off than the national average for funding. The Minister looks dismissive of that figure; perhaps he can tell me how it is wrong.

We want the Government to listen, and I am glad to see the Minister here. We want them to listen to the reality of Leicestershire schools, which need money this coming financial year. They say that the situation has become impossible. We need assurances that things will not get worse next year and in future. I assure the Minister that Leicestershire MPs are angry, be they Labour or Conservative. Parents, teachers and governors are angry. I was told about one governor this morning who thought that there would be no more problems or financial wranglings. He had had enough of trying to balance the budget and he knew that lots of money was coming, so all would be well. When he heard about the funding settlement, he said that it was the one thing that made him want walk away from the job, a job that he does, as do all governors, voluntarily.

Finally, I shall quote from a letter from the headmaster of South Wigston high school. The school is in the constituency of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough, but is on the border and acts as a polling station for my constituency. The school takes a large number of children from Glen Parva and Blaby. This man, who is an excellent headmaster—I have met him several times—says in a letter to the Secretary of State for Education and Skills:

"My school is oversubscribed, taking 30% of our pupils from out of catchment…The school roll…hows us as being one of the most deprived Leicestershire schools… am not looking forward to planning a 2003–04 budget. Classes are already full to bursting, so cutting staffing is out of the question. The most likely situation will be to stop all of the proactive developmental work we do here in teaching and learning linked to social inclusion and use such funds to prop up the budget.

This is no way to run a school. As a Headteacher I need to know that I can plan into the future, and not have the rug pulled from beneath my feet. I had thought that this government had really grasped the need to invest in our children's future and provide schools with the finance to develop properly. It seems completely unfair, both as a parent and a Headteacher, to look only a few miles up the road and see schools where"

pupils are doing a great deal better from the settlement.

I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) on securing the debate. I thank him and the Minister for allowing me to make a brief contribution to this Adjournment debate. I am glad to see the Minister for School Standards here because I believe him to be a bright and intelligent man who is capable of dealing with complicated ideas. However, he is as much a prisoner of the Treasury as he is a free spirit in his Department. I forgive him, up to a point, with regard to the difficulties that he faces in dealing with a debate such as this. Every Member of Parliament has no doubt been knocking on his door and on that of the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, asking for his share of the pork barrel for his constituency. That is a given in debates such as this.

When the Minister for Local Government and the Regions, the right hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Mr. Raynsford), announced the figures for our respective local education authorities in a statement some two or three weeks ago, I was shocked to find that Leicestershire LEA was at the bottom of the pile. I thought that there must have been something wrong with the printing of the tables when I found Leicestershire so far down the list.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blaby cited the example of Mr. Gary Toward, the headmaster of South Wigston high school, which is on the boundary of my constituency and his. The point that my hon. Friend made is exemplified by the fact that that school has to accept a proportion of its pupils from the city of Leicester. Because the city of Leicester is a unitary authority, it has its own education spending budget from central Government. The problems facing South Wigston high school are the same as those facing schools in the borough of Oadby and Wigston in my constituency, right next door to the city of Leicester, and schools in the rural part of my constituency, which stretches right down to the boundary of Northamptonshire. Central Government require them to do more and more and to follow more and more instructions but they are given less and less money to do that with. If the Minister is going to ignore the F40 campaign—of which my hon. Friend, several Labour Members and I were active members—and the pork-barrel pleas from Members of Parliament, I urge him to come and see for himself the effect of his Government's policies on the schools in our constituencies.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby, I have had letters from primary school heads, high school heads, senior school heads, governors, teachers and parents. They are, in effect, holding up their hands in shock and concern at the way in which their schools have to go on. It is now impossible for a chairman of governors or a head to plan ahead for the future development of a school because of the financial regime that has got hold of the system in our constituencies. We need more and better-funded schools in Leicestershire. We must be able to assure our constituents that our schools can plan a bright future for our bright children. I look to the Minister not to wave a magic wand, but to show that he has some kind of intellectual understanding of the terrible problems that his Government have dumped on Leicestershire's people.

I am pleased to have the chance to discuss these important issues with the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan) and the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier). I congratulate the hon. Member for Blaby on securing the debate, and I congratulate them both on the passion with which they argued for higher funding levels in Leicestershire. I share their passion to see greater funding across the country, and I look forward to the day when all political parties have in their manifestos a commitment to raise the share of national income devoted to education. That would benefit from a cross-party approach.

In a debate on funding, it is important to start by congratulating the teachers and pupils in Leicestershire on the outstanding work that is going on in their schools. I am pleased that there are more than 200 more teachers in Leicestershire schools than there were five years ago. Some of the primary school statistics are striking. The percentage of young people reading, writing and counting well has risen from 66 per cent. to 78 per cent. during the past five years. I think that hon. Members on both sides are pleased at that. There is significant improvement in maths and science at key stage 3 and the percentage of pupils getting five good GCSEs has risen from 45 per cent. to 52 per cent. during the past four years. That is a real testimony to the professionalism and dedication of the teachers and pupils.

It is also important to point out the increases in funding that have taken place in Leicestershire in the last five or six years, before I address the points raised by the hon. Member for Blaby.

The hon. Gentleman referred to core funding. He will be pleased to know that the education standard spending assessment for Leicester has increased by over 36 per cent. over the past five years. He also raised the matter of non-core funding, which is an important part of the picture. The standards fund has increased from £3.5 million in 1997 to more than £21 million this year. The school standards direct grant was £3.7 million in 2001, and is £8.2 million this year. Because that grant is not delivered through the formula spending system, it gives extra benefit to Leicester compared with that system. A typical 250-pupil primary school can expect £10,000 more next year, and a typical 1,000-pupil secondary school can expect £50,000 more. Obviously, there have also been major increases in capital spending, which are not under debate today but are important in relation to the schooling infrastructure.

I want to address the points made by the hon. Member for Blaby. I do not know if I shall justify the praise of the hon. and learned Member for Harborough; he may change his mind after listening to me for 10 minutes. The development of a new funding system for local government is a complex enterprise and depends on close working with those in local government. We are very grateful for the work of the education funding group, which was brought together with representatives from the F40 authorities. There was a serious discussion of a whole range of issues.

Having come to the process as a new Minister half way through, I do not think that it is fair to say that anyone was ignored. Everyone really did have their say. When it came to the final reckoning, some F40 authorities did well, others less so; some unitary authorities did well, and others did not. There was a serious amount of discussion.

We tried to base our development of the new system on simple principles. First, there should be a basic entitlement for all pupils; £2,000 in a primary school, £2,600 in a secondary. Secondly. there had to be recognition of additional educational needs. Thirdly, there had to be recognition of additional costs. I shall run through those briefly and address the points that the hon. Member for Blaby made. Our aim is to ensure that similar pupils in different parts of the country have a similar amount of money attached to them. In the end, the reason that Leicestershire is 150th out of 150 local educational authorities for its funding derives from the statistics on pupil need and area cost.

I am pleased that we have been able to raise the amount of money that has gone into Leicestershire schools during the past five years. I am confident that with more money Leicestershire schools could do more. That is why the overall increases in spending are important.

Let me run through the important points raised by the hon. Gentleman. He talked about the area cost adjustment and housing. Although two of the options in the consultation did use housing as a basis for the final settlement of area costs, that was not the final basis used. The final basis of the area cost adjustment was the level of wages to recognise the different costs of recruitment and retention in different parts of the country. We have a national pay scale, but in different parts of the country the costs of recruitment and retention can be higher, and are driven by turnover, above all. About 50 out of 150 local education authorities benefited from the old area cost adjustment system. That meant that there were a significant number of cliff edges in the system, and a degree of rough justice. I am pleased that under the new system we have a much more focused and carefully calibrated approach to the area cost adjustment, so that 99 authorities benefit from it.

Sad to say, that is of little comfort to MPs from Leicestershire of all parties, because Leicestershire LEA is not one of them. In refining the area cost adjustment, we had to target the allowance at those authorities with the highest wage rates. Those do not include Leicestershire. The hon. Member for Blaby also raised the question of additional educational needs. We want to ensure that similar pupils in different parts of the country have a similar amount of money attached to them. The national average percentage of pupils from deprived backgrounds is about 20 per cent. That is the primary driver of the additional educational needs funding. In Leicestershire, that figure stands at about 13 per cent., which is why the recognition of additional educational needs in Leicestershire is lower than elsewhere.

On the question of additional education needs and deprived backgrounds, border schools on the boundary of the city of Leicester are drawing in children from deprived areas—we are delighted to have them—who are sucking away educational resources from the children of our constituencies. The picture is much more complicated than the Minister paints, on a national scale.

I accept that the picture is far from straightforward. Deprivation accounts for about 80 per cent. of additional educational needs, and about 20 per cent. is reserved for the additional costs associated with speaking English as a second language and related issues. There are cross-border questions. We considered carefully whether we should account for mobility in the final formula. We decided not to do so, because the evidence was that it would not change the final distribution of resources much. We have 150 LEAs, which means that there are cross-border issues. I hope that pupils from Leicester are not seen simply as a burden. As the hon. Gentleman says, they are part of the school community in Leicestershire.

I want to say a little more about how the additional educational needs component was developed, because part of it is important and benefits Leicestershire. Under the old system the definition of poverty was based on income support. Two of the options in the consultation paper last autumn repeated that basis, but two others included families in low-wage work and families who were not unemployed but benefited from the working families tax credit. That helps Leicestershire, because the number of families in receipt of working families tax credit is just below the national average, although the number of families receiving income support is far below. Leicestershire will benefit not only from a sounder system but from our recognition of families who are not unemployed but in low-wage work.

In relation to ethnicity, Leicestershire benefits less than many other authorities, because it has between 4 and 5 per cent. of pupils with English as an additional language. That compares to a national average of about 9 per cent.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned sparsity in passing. It would be a pity not to recognise that the Government have taken an important step forward with the proposal that a sparsity element be inserted in the new formula to reflect the cost of home-to-school transport in rural areas and to help rural primary schools. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman welcomes that part of the new formula. We considered in detail whether to introduce a sparsity element for secondary schools, but we found no evidence of a connection between secondary school size and sparsity. Small schools are as likely to be found in densely populated metropolitan areas—perhaps unexpectedly—as in shires such as Leicestershire.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the gap between the highest and the lowest-funded authority. I can understand that. He also quoted some figures about the relationship between the lowest-funded authority and the average, which I did not recognise. The figure that I have is that the gap between the lowest-funded authority and the median has hardly changed. There has been a difference of about 10 per cent. in the two periods. If the hon. Gentleman wants to write to me about the figure that he quoted, I can certainly look into it. He or the hon. and learned Member for Harborough also referred to a letter that they had written to the Department that had not been answered. I shall follow that up.

The letter concerned the Criminal Records Bureau.

I certainly undertake to find out what has happened to the reply to that letter.

The hon. Gentleman did not say much about the floors and ceilings in the new system, but it is important to recognise the 3.2 per cent. floor this time and, significantly, the impact of that in future years. Because Leicestershire is quite close to the floor, it will do better in years two and three of the spending review. We want to make sure that there is as much certainty as possible in the medium term, so that schools and local authorities can plan. We have not yet been able to announce the floors for future years—we want to see how the system works—but because Leicestershire is quite close to the floor this year, the transition will be relatively short. I think that it can look forward to significantly improved funding by years two and three of the spending review—financial years 2004–05 and 2005–06.

Finally, no one should deny—certainly no Government Member does that difficult decisions remain about how to spend money in our education system. Those difficult decisions are made by governors and heads. I reassure the hon. Gentleman that we are committed to continuing to increase the quantum of funding that goes into education. That will benefit Leicestershire to the extent of its needs. I want to see funds growing across the country, and the best route to that is to continue to raise the overall spend on education and to distribute it as fairly as possible. That is what we have sought to do in the new funding system.